Down the Rabbit Hole with a Photoshop Legend, Part 1

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Bert Monroy has been working in Photoshop longer than almost anyone on Earth, and his artwork hangs in offices and museums around the world. From photorealistic imagery to commercial illustration, Bert has done it all, and he’s here to share his secrets with you. A session with Bert is like falling down an Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole, with amazement around every turn. But with Bert as your guide, you’ll quickly be learning how to use his techniques for your own Photoshop projects.

This is Part 1 of a 3-part tutorial. See Part 2 here.

Google Slides: What You Just Gotta Know

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The presentation design world is shifting rapidly, and many companies today are starting to use Google Slides alongside or instead of PowerPoint. Learn what you need to know to survive the transition, including:

  • What translates and what doesn’t
  • Best practices for managing collaborations (and client/boss expectations)
  • Hidden features and add-ons you need to know

The Best PowerPoint Features That Nobody Knows Exist

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PowerPoint has a reputation for being boring, and its functions really haven’t changed since flint was at the cutting edge of cutting edges, but things have been really different since Office 365 came along. Now, there are new tools added every few weeks, and there are tremendous gains to be had from a whole host of functions. There are also a few stunning features hidden away that are really old.

So come along to this session to see how to get the most out of PowerPoint and give your presentations a real boost. You’ll see amazing things with AI-driven design ideas, 3D models, custom video cropping, ink drawing tools, interactive Zoom links, live subtitles, live presentations, and the terrific Morph transition.

In this session, you’ll learn to::

  • Do more with PowerPoint than you ever have before
  • Create sophisticated visual stories in seconds using a variety of tricks and hacks with Morph
  • Incorporate amazing AI functions to dictate, design, transcribe, and translate content

Behind-the-Scenes With a World-Class Presentation Template

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Ever wonder what goes into making a presentation template that more than 23,000 engineers, salespeople, designers, marketers and other employees need to use daily? Get a guided tour of the new Adobe corporate template and have a peek under the hood to see how it was constructed to balance ease of use with staying on brand and looking great.

Adobe Dimension for Graphic and Packaging Designers

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The session focuses on how to get Photoshop and Illustrator designs into a 3D environment. Content includes:

  • Finding models
  • Basic shapes
  • Decal vs material
  • CC Libraries
  • Linked graphics
  • Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop artboards
  • Lighting and rendering

Super Simple Slide Design

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You know the old adage: You can make slides fast, or you can make them good-looking, but not both—that is, it seems impossible to make good-looking slides fast. So join us for a fast-paced exploration of making the impossible possible, as we make great slides quickly and efficiently, with a minimum of hassle and a maximum of fun.

Topics include:

  • One button design. No, really.
  • Modifying your design doesn’t have to be a chore
  • Great tips every PowerPoint user needs to know

InDesign for Building Presentations

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You already have Adobe InDesign, so why not use it to help you make your presentations? After all, laying out a slide is very similar to laying out a page.

Join us as we explore:

  • Exporting InDesign documents to PowerPoint or Keynote
  • Amazing plug-ins, scripts, and resources to help you build high-quality slides
  • Why you should consider HTML5 (exported right out of InDesign!) for your next slide deck

12 Principles of Animation for PowerPoint

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Animation is a critical component in presentations—it paces the flow of information, making things clearer for your audience. It supports more effective storytelling with the visuals and animations doing a lot of the work, helping people understand the key points. And it can be used to produce beautiful looking presentations, with the animation enhancing your design, making everything appear more professional.

But animation can also be terrible. If you’re still using the bounce animation, then you should probably go back to 35mm slides.

To make your presentations work and use animation effectively, you need to understand the 12 key principles of animation, first introduced by Disney and now used as a bible for animators everywhere.

In this session, you’ll learn to:

  • Use animations in PowerPoint effectively to enhance storytelling and design
  • Combine animations to create novel effects that will amaze, delight, and enrich your audience’s experience
  • Become an animations ninja, creating and using animations at super-human speeds

Adobe After Effects for Print and Web Designers

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Get to know the “other” design application in the Creative Cloud. Chances are you know Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. But did you know After Effects supports just as many file formats, provides amazing design and compositing features, and can be used in any print, web, animation, video, or photo compositing project?

What you’ll learn:

  • The After Effects interface
  • Starting a new project from scratch
  • How After Effects is similar to Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign
  • How to import photos, videos, and artwork into your project
  • Applying effects (it’s all about effects!)
  • Getting started with Animations in After Effects
  • Exporting animations for social media, web, and email animations

The Most Important Design App Ever is… Excel?!

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We know it sounds crazy, but every designer and production artist needs to know at least a little bit about Microsoft Excel! There is just so much you can do with this amazing tool. Join us as we cover some of our favorite Excel tricks for designers.

This session includes:

  • Embrace VLOOKUP for matching two lists. Quickly find out which items are missing from one list or the other.
  • Do a Mail Merge from Excel data to InDesign. Create a PDF file with one page per row in Excel.
  • Use Flash Fill in Excel to quickly convert a column of text. Make everything Proper case, extract part numbers, or add text to each line.
  • You, too, can make a pivot table with these four simple steps