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Adobe Comp CC eases prototyping designs on an iPad (pictures)

Adobe's latest addition to its stable of Creative Cloud-centered apps is fairly streamlined.

Lori Grunin
I've been reviewing hardware and software, devising testing methodology and handed out buying advice for what seems like forever; I'm currently absorbed by computers and gaming hardware, but previously spent many years concentrating on cameras. I've also volunteered with a cat rescue for over 15 years doing adoptions, designing marketing materials, managing volunteers and, of course, photographing cats.
Lori Grunin
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1 of 9 Screen capture by Lori Grunin/CNET

Choose your size

When initiating a new Comp, you choose a size and aspect ratio for the page. Adobe supplies a bunch of presets for popular ones.

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2 of 9 Screen capture by Lori Grunin/CNET

Scribble your layout

Comp is based on the theory that you want to start as if the blank page is a napkin, using gestures to scribble predefined object types that are subsequently replaced with text and objects.

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3 of 9 Lori Grunin/CNET

Or just choose the objects to add

It's not as faithful-to-tradition, but you can also just choose objects and placeholders to put on your page without the fancy scribbling recognition.

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4 of 9 Lori Grunin/CNET

Same color picker

Comp CC uses the same color picker and palette handling as the othe Adobe apps. If you want to organize them, though, you have to go to Color CC and create libraries for each set of color themes you want to use. ("Color Themes" is the name of one of my custom libraries.)

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5 of 9 Lori Grunin/CNET

Type

Comp CC supports jumping directly out to Typekit to search for and sync typefaces that you haven't previously set up for on the desktop, and it will sync them back to desktop applications.

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6 of 9 Lori Grunin/CNET

Cropping

Your crop options are rounded rectangles, rectangles or circles/ovals.

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7 of 9 Lori Grunin/CNET

Type options

Line and letterspacing controls are a nice surprise.

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8 of 9 Lori Grunin/CNET

Send to...

While the ability to hand off a Comp directly to a desktop application is nice, it's not optional. You can't save the native file out any other way, just as an image.

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9 of 9 Lori Grunin/CNET

Images

These are the various ways you can get images into the app. The placeholders come in round or rectangle and you can simply tap one to fill it with an image.

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