February 2019 Release of Adobe XD: More Love for Photoshop and Illustrator, Audio Narration, and Increased Language Support
Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, so it’s fitting our February update of Adobe XD is all about sharing the love: between products, people, and communities across the globe. You may have missed it during the holidays. But it’s now easier than ever to use XD with Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects. Meanwhile, with this months release, you’ll be able to communicate your concepts even faster thanks to our new narration tool for Mac users. If you’re designing in Spanish or Brazilian Portuguese, XD is now available in these languages too; and that includes full support for voice prototyping in these languages (with multiple accents and personas available). Read on for more details on these features and more in XD this month.
Improved in XD: Importing from Photoshop and Illustrator, exporting to After Effects
Making sure XD works as smoothly as possible with Photoshop and Illustrator has been a major priority for our design and development team, and this month we’ve made it even easier to bring your Ps and Ai designs into XD. Now, when you use File Import, Photoshop and Illustrator files will be placed right in the doc you have open, rather than opening as a separate doc. Smart objects will import as expanded layers instead of bitmaps, and adjustment layers are retained, meaning your Photoshop file stays fully editable instead of being flattened. To make sure all your files stay connected, CC Libraries links will now be retained for Ps and AI files imported into XD.
Designers who want to add an extra jolt of advanced animation to their prototypes now have more power, thanks to improved visual fidelity when exporting to After Effects. Ae now supports text paragraph spacing, inside and outside strokes, and the tool will now handle XD symbols better too. We’ve also fixed an issue where some symbols were transferred with cropped borders or shadows.
Improved in XD: Record interactions with audio narration
Here’s one that designers who work remotely are sure to love: you’re now able to add narration via your microphone when you record a desktop preview interaction. This is especially useful when you need to present to a client or stakeholder but you can’t be physically there to walk them through the application flow. Check out this new feature in action in the video below.
While this feature has been accessible to Windows users via an OS-level control in Gamecentre, this new functionality extends to Mac users, too.
Improved in XD: Eyedropper shortcut makes changing colours easier
It’s one of the most beloved little tools in any designer’s toolbox, and now we’ve added a shortcut for the eyedropper that makes it easier than ever to change object colours. All you have to do is select the object or group of objects that you’d like to change the colour of, and hit ‘i’ on the keyboard. This brings up the eyedropper cursor, and from there you can select any colour on the design canvas to change my object or objects to that colour as well.
To get out of the colour selection mode, all I have to do is hit escape. The colour picker allows you to select absolute colours only; I can’t select a linear or radial gradient via this tool.
The Adobe XD plugin ecosystem: More than 100 plugins and growing
With over 100 plugins available for XD already and more launching every week, users are extending the power of XD with plugins that automate repetitive tasks and bring prototypes to life — like UI Faces to generate avatars for design mockups or Lorem Ipsum to easily insert placeholder text and Calendar to build a real calendar month without having to look up all the months and dates manually anymore.
Furthermore, XD plugin developers are excited about January’s addition of deep linking to plugins, making it easier than ever to share plugins with users.
Interested in building a plugin and live in Europe? Join us in London, Amsterdam, or Mannheim to learn about Adobe XD, its plugin ecosystem, and how to build your own XD plugins.
New to XD: Support for Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese
Adobe XD has been available in English, French, German, Japanese, and Korean for some time, but now we’re happy to announce support for Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese has been added as well.
Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese support extends to both the language of your application, and also the voice recognition and speech playback features. You’ll now be able to fully prototype interactive voice experiences when working either of these languages.
UX Community
We’d love to continue the dialogue! Help us shape the future of Adobe XD by submitting feature requests or file bugs at https://adobexd.uservoice.com. You can follow our handle @AdobeXD for updates or reach the team on Twitter using the #AdobeXD. You can also talk to us using Facebook, where we share videos and updates as well as answer questions during live sessions.
#MadeWithAdobeXD
While sharing your prototypes on Behance, don’t forget to tag them with #MadeWithAdobeXD and select Adobe XD under “Tools Used” for the opportunity to be featured in the Adobe XD Newsletter.