School of Professional Studies Office of Distance Learning

This page is related to Graphics & Images

At a Glance

• Adobe Creative Suite is a collection of software applications for graphic design, video editing, web development, and photography.
• You can manually install Adobe Creative Suite directly from the Service Management site.
• Adobe Express is the easiest tool for creating graphics such as banners, infographics, and PowerPoint slides

Overview of Adobe Creative Suite

Northwestern faculty have access to the full Adobe Creative Suite which includes all of the Adobe Apps and access to Adobe Stock and Adobe Express. We encourage faculty to choose the tools that are best suited for their skillset and needs. The tools below are not required to

How to Install Adobe Creative Suite

You can manually install each app that best suits your needs or download the Adobe Creative Cloud App and login with your northwestern.edu email, select the “Company or School” option and you’ll be forwarded to a NU NetID login screen. You are allowed to have three active licenses installed on separate devices at a time.

Adobe Creative Suite Apps

Adobe Express

• Difficulty Rating: Easy
• Description: If you need a quick decorative graphic for your course site, Adobe Express is an excellent tool that offers a lot of customizable options, graphic elements, and templates to choose from. The learning curve is set to easy due to its drag and drop feature. It is highly recommended to login to your Adobe account and explore many of its content creation features.
• Links:
  • How to get started from the Adobe Express Site

Photoshop

• Difficulty Rating: Intermediate
• Description: Adobe Photoshop software is a photo editing tool that specializes in digital imaging, design, photography, video editing and more. Faculty can adjust images.
• Links:
  • Learn Photoshop by Adobe
  • Photoshop Help Guides

Illustrator

• Difficulty Rating: Moderate
• Description: Adobe Illustrator is a graphic design tool that specializes in logos, icons, graphics, and illustrations. Faculty can create graphs and charts using Illustrator’s Graph and Chart tool. The benefits of using Illustrator over PowerPoint are that you have more design control over the result.
• Links:
  • It is essential that faculty understand the basics of vector graphics if they wish to use Adobe Illustrator. LinkedIn Learning offers an introductory class on Illustrator if faculty wishes to learn more. To know more about how to create charts and graphs using Adobe Illustrator, watch this LinkedIn Learning video: Import Excel Data into Illustrator
  • Learn Illustrator by Adobe
  • Illustrator Help Guides

Adobe Stock

• Difficulty: N/A
• Description: Adobe Stock is a service that provides access to a vast library of high-quality, royalty-free images, videos, illustrations, vectors, templates, and 3D assets. Users can browse and license these assets for use in their courses and creative projects, making it easier to find the visual elements to enhance their work. All standard Adobe stock products fall under an Education License agreement with Northwestern. Please note, premium content is not covered under the standard Education License.
• Links:
  • Adobe Stock
  • Learn more about Adobe’s Educator license

Adobe Firefly

• Difficulty: N/A
• Description: Adobe Firefly is a suite of generative AI-powered features designed to help users create content. It allows you to generate images, edit photos, apply artistic styles, and create social media content, flyers, and more using text descriptions. Key features include:
  • Text to Image: Generate entire images from text prompts.
  • Generative Fill: Modify images by adding, removing, or replacing elements using text prompts.
  • Text to Video: Create videos from text prompts or images.
  • Text to Vector: Create vector illustrations from text prompts.
  • Translate Audio and Video: Translate clips into various languages while preserving the original voice and pitch.
  • Enhance Audio: Clean up background noise and increase voice volume from voice over clips

  Faculty and staff are given 1,000 credits to use these AI-generated services and replenishes every month. Note that the results will vary depending on the subject matter.

• Links:
  • What’s new with Adobe Firefly

Benefits of Adobe Creative Suite Accounts

Under your Adobe Account, faculty has access to the Adobe Stock which offers photos, vectors, illustrations, 3d assets, motion graphics, templates, and video stock footage. There’s an unlimited number of assets you can license under the educational plan, but Premium assets required to be purchased. Faculty also has access to the Generative AI Text-to-Image tool called Firefly. There is a monthly AI credits (1,024 per prompt) that refreshes every month.

Conclusion

The Adobe Creative Suite offers a comprehensive set of tools that cater to a wide range of creative needs, from graphic design to video editing. Faculty can leverage these powerful applications to enhance their teaching materials and engage students more effectively. The installation process is straightforward, and the flexibility of having multiple licenses allows for seamless integration across different devices. By utilizing these resources, educators can elevate their course content, making learning more dynamic and visually appealing.