Adobe CC Export for Screens

Much excitement over the introduction of Adobe Illustrator CC’s ‘Export for Screens’ tool, bringing a structured workflow to managing and exporting web assets.

Export for Screens

So rather than having to create individual artboards at different sizes for responsive websites, ‘Export for Screens’ acts like a mini CMS, allowing you to design once, and publish artboards to multiple iOS and Android device preset formats.

Export Assets

But wait – there’s more! Export for Screens also has an option for exporting individual graphics assets. Great for producing individual icons or other graphics without having to slice up the overall layout.

And all your saved assets can live update, so if you need to edit the base artwork, the graphics update automatically.

And of course, if you export to Creative Cloud, your assets are available for anyone else working on the project.

Now I have to admit that I’m ambivalent about Adobe’s Creative Cloud. The range of tools, features and storage that Adobe offer temp me to commit completely to their platform, and I find that uncomfortable.

However, with ‘Export for screens’, I’m almost won over.

Top tips:

• Make sure your artwork is aligned to the pixel grid. [Note to Adobe – when will you offer a ‘snap artboard to grid’ option?]
• Images cropped with a clipping path export to the size of the unclipped image & need to be re-cropped in Photoshop.