Collaborating Using Adobe Cloud Documents

In the following excerpt from
Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign Collaboration and Workflow you can learn what you need to know to start using Adobe cloud documents. Learn the unique advantages cloud documents offer, how to collaborate with sharing and commenting features, and how to work with cloud documents when you’re offline. Note: The files referred to in this excerpt are not provided, but you can substitute your own files.

What Are Cloud Documents?

Creative Cloud is rapidly evolving into a solution that enables you to save native Adobe documents directly into the Adobe cloud infrastructure. A cloud document is saved in a special version of an Adobe native format that provides additional capabilities and features when collaborating. At the time of this writing, you can save the following as cloud documents:

• Adobe Photoshop files, identified as PSDC files
• Adobe Illustrator files, identified as AIC files
• Adobe InDesign files, identified as INDDC files
• Adobe XD files, identified as XDC files (beyond the scope of this book)

Solutions like Adobe Fresco and Adobe Aero use cloud documents as their native file format.

Saving cloud documents consumes online storage within your Creative Cloud account but also makes the file available from the Creative Cloud app, the Creative Cloud website, the Creative Cloud mobile app, and individual Adobe design apps such as Illustrator, Photoshop, and others.

Cloud documents versus Creative Cloud Libraries

Cloud documents are different from Creative Cloud Libraries. A library allows you to save individual assets and snippets from Creative Cloud applications. It also allows you to save files in formats such as PDF or JPEG or as native Adobe documents, all with the intention of using these assets in one or more projects. A cloud document is complete in itself—like an AI, PSD, or INDD, it’s a native Adobe file format that is saved to the cloud and offers specific advantages.

You can use Creative Cloud Libraries in almost every desktop and mobile app that comes with your Creative Cloud membership. And with the ability to add Microsoft integrations or third-party automation capabilities, libraries are a key component of the greater Adobe ecosystem.

Cloud documents, on the other hand, are specific to individual Adobe apps, which sometimes limits their use to single-app projects. Recent updates to cloud documents, however, have started to bring certain cross-application functionalities, as you experienced in Lesson 2 when you placed a linked Photoshop document into Illustrator.

TIP: It is not possible to save a cloud document into a ­Creative Cloud Library.

Advantages of cloud documents

The most obvious advantage to saving a file as a cloud document is the fact that you have it available whenever you log in to your Creative Cloud account. This makes it easy to work on a cloud document from different computers, as when switching from your desktop to your laptop, or when you need to place a cloud document into another file, as you did in Lesson 2.

You can also save different versions of a document to the cloud as a single document. This makes it easy to view or revert to previously saved versions of your design. Consult the Adobe Help pages for more information on this subject (Figure 1).

Figure 1            

Lastly, you can share and collaborate on cloud documents with others. Sharing offers you the ability to place files created by others directly from the cloud into your documents.

Working online versus offline

Cloud documents are saved online, so you need an internet connection to view or edit them. When you open a cloud document from Photoshop or Illustrator, a local copy of the file will be downloaded before you are able to work on it. Any changes you make to the file will be saved and synchronized to the original file that is hosted on the Adobe cloud servers.

If you want a specific cloud document to be available every time you start your computer without having to download it first, tell the Creative Cloud app to keep a copy of the file available offline:

1. Open the Creative Cloud app.
2. Click the Files tab.
3. In the Your Files category (which is selected by default), right-click the document you want to keep offline and choose Make Available Offline Always (Figure 2).

Figure 2

Note: Changes made to an offline version of a cloud document will still be synchronized to Creative Cloud, as long as an internet connection is available.

Sharing Cloud Documents

The two main purposes for sharing a cloud document are coediting and commenting. Let’s explore these options.

Sharing for coediting

Coediting means giving others privileges to directly edit your document using their Creative Cloud account. This means that multiple designers can work on the same original file without having to create a duplicate for every user. This is very much the same behavior as saving a document on a server to which multiple team members have access. And just like on a server, only one user can access the document at a time. This means that the file needs to be closed in order to make it available for editing by others with whom the file was shared.

Sharing a cloud document with the intention of coediting allows you to exchange assets with others without having to manually send the documents via file transfer systems, send them via third-party cloud solutions, or exchange USB drives. And because your cloud documents live within your Creative Cloud storage, they’re readily available the moment you start apps like Photoshop or Illustrator.

Coediting a document is a great way to extend access to your work when you’re not around. A few examples:

• When you want a remote co-worker to access your document while you’re away on holiday
• When you need to share an entire document with others
• When others need to reuse or copy a portion of your design
• When someone needs to place your shared file into one of their designs, either by linking or embedding

TIP: The only exception to the limitation of one user working on one file at a time is Adobe XD, where multiple users can edit a live document at the same time. To learn more about coediting in Adobe XD, see https://helpx.adobe.com/xd/help/collaborate-coedit-designs.html.

Sharing a cloud document

Sharing a cloud document is as easy as sharing a Creative Cloud Library.

1. Start Illustrator, and choose Illustrator > Preferences > General (macOS) or Edit > Preferences > General (Windows). The Preferences dialog box opens.
2. Click Reset Preferences, then click OK to close the dialog box.
3. Click Restart Now in the confirmation dialog box to restart Illustrator.
4. From the Lesson09/Imports folder, open communication.ai in Illustrator.
5. Choose File > Save As.
6. In the dialog box, click Save Cloud Document to save it as a cloud document (Figure 3).

Figure 3

7. Click Save to save the file to your Creative Cloud storage (Figure 4). At the top of the document window you’ll notice a cloud icon next to the filename and the altered filename extension. This has become an AIC document that is ready to be shared with others (Figure 5).

Figure 4

Figure 5

8. In the upper-right corner, click the Share Document button to start the sharing process (Figure 6).

Figure 6

9. In the Share Document dialog box, click the gear icon at the top right to view the available settings (Figure 7). The sharing principles you learned when sharing libraries are also used when sharing cloud documents: do you want to invite specific, named recipients into the document, or do you want to create an open URL that anyone can view? Let’s share the document with a specific individual.

Figure 7

10. Make sure Only Invited People Can Access is selected. Click the back arrow next to the word Settings to return to the main screen.
11. Click in the Invite People To Edit field and enter an email address. This should be an address that differs from the one you use for your Creative Cloud membership. Remember that we’re doing this only for demonstration purposes (Figure 8).

Figure 8

12. Optionally, add a few words to help the recipient understand why the document is being shared with them.
13. Click Invite To Edit to send the invitation.

Viewing a shared invitation

Because the recipient of this demo requires a Creative Cloud membership in order to use the file, it’s possible you won’t be able to follow these steps. If that is the case, please read through them to better understand the procedure.

1. Click the Open button in the invitation email to view the file in a web browser (Figure 9).

Figure 9

2. Using the recipient’s Creative Cloud account, launch Illustrator.
3. Choose File > Open.
4. In the Open dialog box, click the Open Cloud Document button.
5. In the Open From Creative Cloud dialog box, click the Shared With You ­category to view the received document (Figure 10).You can now open and edit the received document. Also know that you can place the shared document in other Adobe apps—for example, Photoshop. But whatever you do, keep in mind that this is the original document, not a shared copy. So every edit you make to this document will be visible to anyone that is part of the collaboration.

Figure 10

6. Close the file.

Commenting on a document

Sharing a cloud document with others as an open URL lets them comment on your document from a web browser. This is a great way of gathering feedback from important stakeholders.

1. Make sure you are using the same Creative Cloud account that was used to save the original communication.aic document.
2. Click the Share Document icon in the upper-right corner, and then click the gear icon.
3. In the Settings, select Anyone With The Link Can View and make sure people with the link are allowed to comment (Figure 11).

Figure 11

4. Return to the main Share Document screen and click the Copy Link button to copy the shared URL to the clipboard (Figure 12).

Figure 12

Viewing a shared document

The invited guest can comment on your document and the comments will appear in Illustrator.

1. Open a web browser window and navigate to the copied URL. The document is visible in the user’s web browser, allowing anyone with the URL to comment on the document.
2. Click the Comment option on the right and add the text Change calendar date to 11th of Feb.
3. Click the Pin icon and click the calendar artwork to place the pin. Then click Submit to confirm the comment (Figure 13).

Figure 13

4. The system prompts you to log in. Choose whether to use an existing (­potentially free) Adobe account, or to comment as a guest (Figure 14).

Figure 14

The comment is placed on the document and the designer is notified via the ­Creative Cloud app and email.

Viewing shared comments in Illustrator

Let’s view the received comment in Illustrator.

1. Return to Illustrator and make sure communication.aic is still open.
2. Choose Window > Comments. The comment is displayed in the Comments panel, and the pin appears directly in the Illustrator document (Figure 15).

Figure 15

Once you view comments in Illustrator, you can reply to the commentator using the Comments panel. Or you can click the Resolve icon to mark the requested change as resolved.

Sharing restrictions

If you’re a Creative Cloud for Enterprise member, your organization can limit sharing capabilities when using Creative Cloud Libraries or cloud documents. Security policies or project confidentiality are the typical drivers behind a policy of limiting a designer’s sharing capabilities within an organization. The limitations you can impose on designers include deactivating the ability of sharing via open URLs (the Get Link command), limiting the Invite People command to users of the same email domain, and white-listing additional email domains when inviting into a library people who use a different email domain from your own. Trying to use any of these limited sharing commands will result in a user error that redirects you to your IT department. These settings can be used only when your organization is using Federated or Enterprise Creative Cloud accounts (Figure 16).

Figure 16

Note: For more information on the details of setting up these sharing restrictions be sure to consult Adobe’s help pages.