Adobe Slate review: make beautiful stories to share with others

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Whether you are creating a Christmas newsletter to send to family or a weekly update on the progress of a project to your boss, you can make your presentation look fantastic with Adobe Slate for iPad.

Adobe’s new creativity app allows users to build their stories from specially designed templates, which are uploaded to a website so they can be shared with anyone. We’ve got an app review of Adobe Slate for you today.

Concept

The app is built around the idea that anyone can present an attractive story, newsletter, or announcement for others using pictures, text and website links. The final presentation is uploaded to a special web page on Slate.Adobe.com. Users can then share the story to others via the unique link. You can keep the page private, or allow anyone to see your masterpiece.

Design

This creative app is very easy and intuitive to use. The controls are obvious, with special icons to add items, editing options, and more. If you just want to browse through other Slate stories, select one that interests you and scroll through the adventure by swiping upward.

The pre-made stories serve as an inspiration to help you create something. Whether you are showing off your family vacation photos in a scrapbook setting, inviting family to your college graduation, or telling your customers about an upcoming sale, you can get ideas for your story by exploring others’.

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App Use

Users must log in using their Adobe ID to use this app. If you don’t have one, an account is free and you do not need a subscription to Creative Cloud to use it. Once logged in, you can either explore the story feed or start creating your own project.

When creating a new project, you will start with a Title and subtitle if necessary. For the title portion, you can add a background image. Then, you will add new sections below.

When adding a text section, you can adjust the font size between normal, Heading 1 and Heading 2. You can also make a numbered or bulleted list, and put the text in italicized quotes.

You can add pictures directly from your iPad, or access them from Creative Cloud, Lightroom, or Dropbox. You can also search for images from copyright-free content provided by Adobe.

Photos can be set as inline, which displays them similar to a blog roll, inline with the rest of the story, fill screen, which fits the image to the screen, but still within the story’s feed, window, which sets the image in the background so that the text or photos above and below it scroll over the top of it, or full width, which displays the picture in its full size.

You can also include a grid of photos, for which it appears you can add an unlimited number of images. I stopped at 24 in my test.

When adding a link, you will create a button. Name the button and then add the URL address. As far as I can tell, there is no way to include a link in the body of the text.

There are 11 different themes, which slightly alters the look of the story with different fonts, background colors, and layout styles.

When finished, tap the Share icon to upload the story to the unique web page. Here you can set the link to private so that only people you give it to can see it, or leave it public so that Adobe can share it on their Explore feed for others to see. You can also select to share it on Facebook and Twitter, and through email or text. If you have a website, you can create an embed code for it, as well.

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The Good

It is incredibly easy to put together a story with this app. I built a quick newsletter for a friend who owns a comic book shop in a matter of minutes. Everything is easy to use and works seamlessly.

You can also duplicate a story. So, if you send out weekly emails with some of the same content (like business addresses, etc.) you can make a copy and edit the duplicate with new information, preserving the original template design.

Any edits you make will also be saved as long as you hit the Share icon again so the changes are uploaded.

The Bad

I didn’t find anything wrong with this app. It worked perfectly and was easy to use. I was never confused or stuck trying to figure out how to add or remove anything.

Value

Adobe Slate is free to download and use. If you are a Creative Cloud subscriber, you can access that content from within the app. There are no in-app purchases. Everything available is provided to all Adobe ID account holders, whether you pay for a subscription or not.

Conclusion

This is a great program for people who send weekly letters or updates to friends, family, or customers. I highly recommend it for anyone wishing to reach out to others with an attractive format, but don’t have the time (or skills) to build it themselves. Download it in the App Store today.

Related Apps

Adobe Voice is very similar, but acts more as a slideshow or mini movie, using your voice to tell the story.