Integrate Adobe Express/Canva into Indesign

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
January 12, 2023
3 replies
7235 views

So Adobe Indesign has some BASIC animations and I feel this is a completely missed opportunity on Adobe's behalf. Apps like Canva have been spreading like wildfire for years and while Adobe has released Express it is a poor cousin. The idea behind Express/Canva is to have an easy-to-create, templated video/animated solution for social media (which let's face it, is mostly video now), yet as a very heavy InDesign user I should be able to animate and export these animations while also taking advantage of the powerful mail merge (text, images, and it really needs to also have swatches), bulk relinking, dynamically updating files features that we all know and love within the adobe suite.

What I would love to see included in Indesign

1/ export of animation in mp4 and gif (including transparency) formats.

2/ Improved Animation (on a page and page transitions)

3/ Additionally, the use of MOGRTs or being able to make your own custom animations with placeholders would be amazing.

Why Adobe Express doesn't work

- Creative Cloud Library files are not dynamic, which means having to upload every single element you want to use (for me that's around about 50 every month - same templated files, different theming).

- These files are already on my computer and such a waste of time and resources to upload and replace each image when it's already on my computer. I may as well use Canva which has much more variety.

- Also limited in animations

Why Photoshop/After Effects/Premiere doesn't work

- it lacks the ease to mailmerge multiple items so relinking is arduous

Why in5 doesn't work

- it's limited (gifs are created by screen recording in your browser so it cannot do transparent gifs)

I know a lot of people think that animation and InDesign are in the past, but if you look at businesses that have basically made a multimillion-dollar business out of that base premise I guarantee you will see they have a bright future together.

This topic has been closed for replies.

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Sami_PAAuthor

Known Participant

For anyone who is interested I have moved this across to the Adobe Indesign UserVoice Forum.

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests/suggestions/46537384-integrate-adobe-express-canva-like-features-into-i

James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

Canva is one online tool, largely for amateur/office/executive users and the modestly skilled who depend on templates, automated design and smartphone-level tools to do largely cookie-cutter, often disposable work, mostly for online use. That is, folks who don't need Photoshop because their iPhone has 238 one-click filters.

InDesign is one very complex professional tool amid a set of what is pretty much the world's premiere professional tools for every form of media design and development, a set that includes extremely sophisticated video and motion graphics tools.

While I wish Adobe in general had platform-level support for HTML5 animation, on the level everything once supported Flash, I don't really care that I have to use a separate, highly optimized tool to do animations, and can't do it within a highly optimized publication design tool.

But there's always Canva for those who disagree.

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Sami_PAAuthor

Known Participant

Hi James,

Thanks for your reply. I feel like you may have missed the point of canva. While I agree with most of the points you made about it's userbase I think you, and Adobe, have completely missed the point of why so many use it. And why there are people like me who are forced into using it even though we detest it.

I love Indesign. I can't tell you enough about how it is my go to Adobe app. The fact that it allows me to create templated work and then mail merge in my artwork and designs is invaluable to my business and creativity. I possibly use it quite differently to many people, but it's efficient and scriptable (mostly). That being said the bane of what I have to do is social media, this is where apps like Canva come in.

Social Media has changed from once being primarily static to wanting businesses/creatives to create a mass of both static and gif/video content. We are already using those same assets in Indesign, which also has animation options inside (albeit limited). Many of us who use the Adobe Suite find that while there are other tools available they too involve tedious work arounds where Indesign does 80% of the job already.

The foundation is already in there which could be expanded if only they gave it the time of day.

James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

That's fine and I respect your stance on this and I honestly feel it's an uphill battle I'm on. So I'm also going to put suggestions into after effects/premiere/express in the hopes that I might have more luck with improving efficiencies there.

That being said, a little out of the box thinking can often lead to further innovation and better solutions. For example the invention of bubble-wrap which was initially a texturerd wallpaper or the fact that viagra was initially developed for a treatment of angina, both of which were accidental revolutions.

I get it. You spend all day generating a niche production at high speed for a large company, and want your favorite tool modified to expedite your workflow. This despite other, existing tools in the box that do every aspect of that better than this one tool.

And from your perspective, it's just Adobe being a slug about adding "just these few features" (that don't really fit) (to serve your convenience) (at the expense of overall app focus and functionality) (to a tool that isn't really suited to your task anyway). If you understood how difficult it is to change one menu item on an app this complex and 'grown into' its designed niche... well.

I'd be kinder here, perhaps, if I didn't know for all but a fact that if ID suddenly ingested XD and made your need to churn out cultural detritus more streamlined, you'd be back next week insisting Adobe should make it easy to export Tik-Tok videos, too.

Learn to use these generally superb and highly optimized tools, which work together like a Broadway dance team, as they are used by hundreds of thousands of satisfied professionals. That is, don't take Canva and Figma as some kind of new, ElonMusky model for how the tools would be in a wondrous out of the box world.