*** From the Archives ***

This article is from August 13, 2012, and is no longer current.

How to Use Adobe Ideas

Mike Rankin
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Adobe Ideas is a digital sketchbook app, available in the Apple app store and via Google Play.

It can be used as a mobile companion to Creative Suite apps, allowing users to create sketches on their mobile devices, and then sync them to their computers (via Adobe Creative Cloud) to continue working in Illustrator. Files created with the app can also be exported as vector-based PDF, suitable for high-quality printing.

One of the beauties of most mobile apps is their simplicity. Since they only sport a small set of features and controls, you can begin using them immediately with hardly any instruction. But as mobile apps like Adobe Ideas become more sophisticated, and incorporate many features of desktop apps, there is a greater need for training. To get the most out of apps like Ideas, you may need a deeper source of instruction and inspiration. That is the purpose of a PDF ebook by Michael Startzman, appropriately called How to Use Adobe Ideas.

The ebook contains 42 pages of detailed instructions, tips, and examples of illustrations created entirely with Adobe Ideas.

Here’s the author’s description:

With this eBook, you’ll learn how to:

  • Master techniques professionals use to create three-dimensional illustrations
  • Simulate watercolor painting with transparencies
  • Create breathtaking color palettes from the world around you
  • Emulate eloquent wood cut prints
  • Draw natural lines with the Pen tool
  • Add robust texture to your art
  • Plus detailed information on every tool, setting and icon in Ideas

How to use Adobe Ideas is available for $4 from Michael Startzman’s website, and you can preview it at Issuu.com.

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Mike Rankin
Editor in Chief of CreativePro. Instructor at LinkedIn Learning with courses on InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, GIMP, Inkscape, and Affinity Publisher. Co-author of The Photoshop Visual Quickstart Guide with Nigel French.
  • David Martin says:
    November 22, 2016 at 10:00 am

    Adobe ideas is a lot of fun and so useful for sending off pictures to grandchildren and friends. For me it’s like finger painting but better. But here’s my question. After I’m done drawing, how can freeze the picture, in other words make the image permanent, so that when I open it, no one can accidentally draw on the picture or erase a piece. So far my best solution is to email it to myself and put in in an iPhoto folder. But I’d also like to freeze it in Adobe Ideas itself. Is this possible?

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