What’s not to love about Adobe XD? This powerful tool helps us to design, prototype and share. The good news is, it just got better.
NEW FEATURES & UPDATES AVAILABLE ON ADOBE XD CC 2018
Seamless Import of Photoshop Files:
XD can open Photoshop files seamlessly, so you can design screens within Photoshop, using your favourite filters and rich textures it provides, and open it within XD.
Simply click File > Open and find the PSD you need. When you click to open the PSD, a new XD doc, containing your artboards will open. They’ll be native, with smooth vectors and editable text. From here, you can merge your artboards with your main document and continue designing them if you want. As you click on them, you’ll notice that layers and layer names you’ve created in Photoshop were transferred too.
The Layers Panel is rather minimalistic compared to other apps, because XD’s interface is context aware, showing you only what you need to see when you need to see it. The settings of Property Inspector on the right will change based on your selection.
There’s also a great Assets Panel where you can store your colour swatches, symbols (which is great for keeping everything consistent) and character styles. Where before, symbols only remained linked in a single document, they now remain linked between different documents in the latest version, which goes a long way when it comes to control and consistency.
XD also works seamlessly with Illustrator.
Responsive Resize:
Do you need to reconfigure screens for different aspect ratios and breakpoints? Simply switch on the Responsive Resize toggle and drag any edge of the artboard to the height and width you want, and this time-saving feature will automatically resize your screen proportionally. You can even select a specific layer group, should you only want to resize that particular part of the screen or move it around.
New Plugins Eco-System:
Developers can now build plugins in XD. There’s a Plugins menu where you can view all plugins, saving you the hassle of leaving XD to find them and download them from different websites. It’s worth noting that all these plugins have been vetted by Adobe engineers, so they’ll work well on both Mac and Windows. They allow developers to create their own UI within them and can connect to outside web services, such as Google Translate. Let’s have a look at some of them
World Ready Plugin:
For previews of how your design will look when localized for different languages.
Angle Plugin:
To take the UI that you’ve designed on a specific artboard, for example a mobile phone screen, and paste it into a perspective mock-up of a mobile phone. Open your Layers Panel, select the vector layer that defines the screen, Open the Angle plugin and select the artboard containing the UI, click the Apply button, and Angle will fit and skew your artwork intelligently to the artboard.
Yes, we know we’ve shared lots of features and updates available in Adobe XD and you probably can’t wait to try them out, so we’ll leave you to it for now. In our next article, we’ll continue with a few more awesome XD updates and features, so don’t miss it.