| AdobeR CreativeR Suite 3 is on its third upgrade and the programs included in the suite have been upgraded many more times. So how do you keep up-to-date with what's new, what's improved and how to use the new upgrade in your everyday production. One way, of course, is to read the latest books that cover Creative Suite 3. They are now just starting to show up on Amazon.comR. But most of these books are not scheduled to be published until later this year or even later. So what do you do until then when your current project calls for you to use one of the new tools. One resource you might not yet be familiar with is the online Adobe Creative Suite 3 Video Workshop where you will find video tutorials on everything from how to use one of the new improvements to the basics. This site is set up so that you can easily and quickly find the information you need. Choose a Program As with almost everything these days, the Video Workshop can be navigated by a hierarchical menu. You will start with the top row of panels. In the left panel, is a list of the thirteen programs in Creative Suite 3. Acrobat 8 Professional Bridge CS3 ContributeR CS3 Device Central CS3 DreamweaverR CS3 FireworksR CS3 FlashR CS3 Professional IllustratorR CS3 InDesignR CS3 PhotoshopR CS3 PhotoshopR CS3 Extended Stock Photos Version CueR CS3 Choose a Topic When you click on the program of your choice, the panel to the right will change to a list of topics for that program. This list ranges from general topics such as Getting Started to more specific topics such as ActionScript 3. Click on a topic to narrow your criteria. Customize Your List Under these two panels is a wider panel which lists all the videos that match the criteria from our choices above. By default, there are three columns in the panel that list the Title, Time and Products for each video and the list is sorted by Products. When you click on another column heading, the list of videos is rearranged or sorted by that heading. For example, if you click on the Time heading, the list will be sorted by time from shortest to longest. You can use the drop-down menu to the right of this panel to add additional headings which include Presenter, Level and Topics. Just put a checkmark next to the information you wish to include and a new column will be added to the panel. As you can see from the screenshot, I have all six columns visible. Title - Title of video Presenter – Author of the video Level – Beginner and up Topics – What the video is about Time – Length of video Products – Icons represent the product or products discussed in the video Once you have chosen a video, click on the title. If you click once, you will see details about that video in the bottom panel. You also have a link to the author's bio. In the right panel you can use links to bookmark the video, open a new window which contains the HTML version of the tutorial, download the source files and give feedback. Click twice to watch the video which will open in a floating panel. http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video_workshop |
