Adobe Express – Part 1
What is Adobe Express? Formerly known as Adobe Spark, is a user-friendly tool that lets you create professional-looking social media posts, flyers, videos, and more in just a few clicks. Whether you’re running a small business, managing your personal brand, or just love pretty visuals, Adobe Express might just become your new best friend.
At its core, Adobe Express is a simplified web-based design tool. Think of it as Adobe Photoshop’s cooler, less intimidating cousin. You don’t need advanced skills to create polished content; Adobe Express provides an extensive library of templates, fonts, colors, and even royalty-free stock photos to make your designs look like they were created by a pro.
It’s perfect for creating Instagram posts, YouTube thumbnails, or even business cards—basically, if it needs to look good and you need it done fast, this is the tool. It also can be helpful to presentation designers, which is the focus of the next 2 posts.
HOW MUCH DOES ADOBE EXPRESS COST
Here’s the good news, Adobe Express offers a free plan! It includes access to many templates, fonts, and basic design tools.
The more advanced features require a paid premium plan, ~$100 annually. It is also collaboration focused and offers “team” plans, that are lower pricing, ~$50-80 annually per team member. But the most exciting offering is if you already subscribe to Adobe Creative Cloud, chances are you already have access to the premium version as part of your CC subscription!
WHAT ARE THE PREMIUM TOOLS
The free version is great, but the premium tools really make Adobe Express shine:
- Remove Backgrounds: A click is all it takes to remove the background from an image. No need to fiddle with a million settings.
- Resizing Magic: Want to turn an Instagram post into a Pinterest pin? The premium version resizes your design for different platforms in seconds.
- Exclusive Templates & Fonts: More options mean less time spent tweaking designs.
- Brand Kit: Save your logos, colors, and fonts to keep your branding consistent across all designs.
- Access to Adobe Stock: Get premium stock images and graphics baked right into the platform.
DO I NEED TO INSTALL ANYTHING
Nope! Adobe Express is web-based, so you can use it directly from your browser without installing anything. Adobe Express is available for Windows, Mac, iPad, and smartphones (both iOS and Android). It’s basically wherever you need it to be.
The mobile version is especially handy if you’re managing social media on the go. It syncs with your Adobe account, so you can start a design on your computer and finish it on your phone or vice versa.
WHAT POWERS ADOBE EXPRESS FEATURES
Adobe Express is powered by Adobe’s AI technology, including Firefly. Just Adobe Photoshop, Firefly in Adobe Express can generate images from text prompts. This AI generated tool can assist with automatically removing the background or automatically resizing the layout for every social channel.
WHAT POWERS ADOBE EXPRESS FEATURES
Adobe Express is perfect for anyone who wants to create beautiful content without spending hours learning complicated software. As a team of professional presentation designers, we can see Adobe Express being part of a presentation design workflow.
Now that we have an overview and introduction to Adobe’s newest offering, Adobe Express, in the next few posts we are going to focus on using it to create presentation ready images.
Real-Time Presenter Notes Edits Through Teams – A Look Back to September 2022
Microsoft Teams has a huge selection of tools to make life easier – including real-time collaboration! This tool is just as useful as it was when Troy first talked about it in September of 2022, and the guide he wrote is still handy today!
As a follow up to an earlier blog post (Edit Presenter Notes Live While Presenting!), I have been leveraging Microsoft Teams real-time collaboration (which I find an amazing tool!) for updating presenter notes for quite a while. The process is very easy, assuming you are running Office 365 and have a Microsoft Teams account. The presentation file is uploaded to Microsoft Teams. I open the PowerPoint file using the OPEN > OPEN IN APP, so desktop PowerPoint is used (vs. Teams or PowerPoint for Web). The SAME presentation is opened on the show computer (the computer running the slide show) and on my production computer. The only limitation is the internet connection speed (which is a constant concern while working in a hotel ballroom!). My goal is to NOT touch the show computer, I like it to just present – never lose focus on the slide show, never escape out of slide show.
I make edits on my production/design computer, and they show up on the presentation computer – including presenter notes!
-Troy @ TLC
This is from our Look Back series, rediscovering previous blog posts with relevant PowerPoint tips, tricks and examples. The original September 29th, 2022 blog post can be found here.
TPP e214 – 2.5 Presentation Predictions for 2025
New episode of The Presentation Podcast now available!
Our three industry experts — Troy Chollar, Sandy Johnson, Nolan Haims — have a lively discussion about the future of presentation design in 2025. Each offering 2.5 presentation design predictions for this year, ranging from the impact of AI to the importance of accessibility and emerging design trends. Listen on your favorite podcast app, or at The Presentation Podcast site HERE.
We save presentation files to the Desktop by default – Do You?
When using Microsoft PowerPoint on a Windows computer files save to the “Documents Folder” by default. But is that the best option for your workflow?
Where PowerPoint saves a file by default is an app setting that can be customized. For TLC Creative, we update to have presentations saved to the desktop as the default. Here’s how:
1. Open Microsoft PowerPoint.
2. In PowerPoint, click on the File tab located at the top-left corner of the window.
3. Near the bottom of the File menu, click Options.
4. In the PowerPoint Options dialog, click on the Save category on the left-hand side. This section contains settings related to saving presentations, such as file locations.
5. In the Save presentations section, locate the Default local file location field. This is where PowerPoint saves files by default, and the location can be changed here.
To get the desktop folder path, on Windows 11, do the following:
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- Open a File Explorer window
- Navigate to the desktop folder. The path for the desktop folder is typically C:\Users\[ Username]\Desktop
- Right click the Address bar and select Copy Address as Text
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- Back in PowerPoint, with the PowerPoint Options dialog still open, paste the copied address for the computer desktop into the Default local file location field.
6. Click OK in the PowerPoint Options window to save the changes. From now on, PowerPoint will save any new presentations to the desktop by default!
Notes
- This is for Windows users only: The steps above apply specifically to users on Windows computers. If using an iPad or Mac, the process may differ, and we recommend checking specific support resources for those devices to find the correct method.
- This is an app setting: The save setting will apply to all PowerPoint presentation files going forward. Every time a new file is saved, it will default to saving on the desktop unless a different location is chosen manually.
- Corporate Environment Considerations: If working within a corporate environment, PowerPoint options may have been pre-configured to save files to a shared network drive or another location. In such cases, it’s usually best to leave that setting as-is. Changing it might interfere with company protocols for file storage, access, and sharing. If unsure, it’s always a good idea to consult the IT department before making this change.
There are several benefits to setting PowerPoint’s save location to the desktop. Saving directly to the desktop ensures that presentations are easily accessible. There is no navigating through multiple folders to find them. Also, customizability. While PowerPoint typically defaults to saving files in a more general location (like the Documents folder), customizing allows personalization of the workspace to make your workflow a little smoother.
Pantone’s 2022 Color of the Year – A Look Back to February 2022
With Pantone having just released their Color of the Year for 2025, the TLC Creative team has decided to look back at our Pantone 2022 Color of the Year tie-ins. Pantone’s 2022 Color of the Year was #17-3938 Very Peri. And the TLC Creative design team created 4 free to use, full-feature PowerPoint templates inspired by the Very Peri color.
Pantone’s Color of The Year selection process:
- Pantone Color of the Year started in 1999.
- Each year Pantone has a global team of color experts that are not all Pantone employees.
- Colors are recommendations based on anything and everything that influences color; entertainment, travel, lifestyles, etc. and a study of trends, but not a timely fad.
- The process is generally identify, and agree, on a color. Then continue the process to determine the shade of that color.
- Read this article on the Pantone website for more facts and information about the process.
Pantone released a series of color schemes centered on the Very Peri color of the year. The TLC Creative team created 4 PowerPoint templates inspired by the Pantone color schemes. Each is a full-feature PowerPoint template, FREE to download and use!
- From Pantone’s “Wellspring” color scheme, we created this PowerPoint template. The full February 9, 2022 is available. Download the ready to use PowerPoint template HERE.
- From Pantone’s “Amusements” color scheme, we created this PowerPoint template. The full February 21, 2022 post is available. Download the ready to use PowerPoint template HERE
- From Pantone’s “Balancing Act” color scheme, we created this PowerPoint template. The full February 23, 2022 post is available. Download the ready to use PowerPoint template HERE
- From Pantone’s “Star of the Show” color scheme, we created this PowerPoint template. The full February 25, 2022 post is available. Download the ready to use PowerPoint template HERE.
This is from our Look Back series, rediscovering previous blog posts with relevant PowerPoint tips, tricks and examples.
2 FREE PowerPoint Templates – Inspired By the Pantone 2025 Color of the Year
Pantone’s 2025 Color of the Year, Mocha Mousse, is the inspiration for these 2 PowerPoint templates – and both are Free to download and use!
Christie, on the TLC Creative design team, used the Pantone Mocha Mousse color as PowerPoint’s Accent 1 and created a rich color template.
This full feature PowerPoint template has all core styling elements preset – and includes a theme layout, plus three full frame (eg. no placeholders) layout options!
Download the editable PowerPoint file HERE. (2.7 MB, .pptx)
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Mike on the TLC Creative design team also used the Pantone Mocha Mousse color as PowerPoint’s Accent #1 for a PowerPoint template.
This full feature PowerPoint template has all core styling elements preset – and a master layout picture placeholder is preset for the logo on the Theme and Title layouts (insert either layout, click the picture placeholder to insert your logo).
Download the editable PowerPoint file HERE (2 MB, .pptx)
Free PowerPoint Color Schemes Based on the Pantone 2025 Color of the Year
Pantone’s Color of the Year for 2025 is #17-1230, “Mocha Mousse”.
As an internal design project, Amber on the TLC Creative presentation design team, created a custom color scheme inspired by the Mocha Mousse color. Download this 3 slide sample, with custom PowerPoint color scheme (that can be applied to any PowerPoint file), HERE.
Jake on the TLC Creative presentation design team, created this custom color scheme using the Mocha Mousse color as the inspiration. Download this 3 slide sample, with custom PowerPoint color scheme (that can be applied to any PowerPoint file), HERE.
