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1 – Track changes and production revisions (for Adobe Story Plus only)

It is important to keep track of any changes you or someone else may make to a document. It’s easy to save over the previous version with the new one, but what if you want to compare the previous and current versions to one another? You are able to track any and all revisions through this feature. Called revision styles, all revisions become associated with a unique style for easier identification.

Track changes

Before moving to revisions, we need to be able to know how to insert and track changes made to a document. This is how it is done:

  1. When in the AUTHORING view, in the document, go to the Review tab in the top tool bar. Check Start Tracking Changes to enable it, and uncheck it to disable:

  2. When it is checked, any new content you add will be in red text and highlighted:

  3. There is a speech bubble on the right-hand side of the addition, which allows for the person making the change to add a comment. Click on the icon to open the comment window:

  4. When you place the cursor over the inserted change, a new bubble will appear telling you who made the change and when. On the far right-hand side, you can either accept or reject the change:

Production revisions

You have to be in the Authoring view in order to make a revision. Production revisions highlight certain pages where changes have been made. The script becomes locked and all changes are highlighted in the revision style you choose. On the title page, a note is inserted on the bottomright corner giving the date of the last revision. This is also done on the footer of every page where there is a change. The color changes and borders will not be exported in a PDF.

Before starting a revision, make sure that you have done the following:

  1. Act on all tracked changes in your document by accepting or rejecting them.

  2. Disable track changes after completing accepting/rejecting tracked changes.

Now, after completing the preceding steps, follow these steps:

  1. Select Production | Start Revision.

  2. In the Active Revision drop-down, choose a revision style:

    This style will be used for the markups in the revision. Make sure that you haven’t already used the chosen style for a previous revision document.

  3. Click Start Revision.

Creating a revision style

Follow these steps to create your revision style:

  1. Select Production | Manage Revisions.

  2. Click on the + icon.

  3. Enter a name for the style

  4. The following options can be tailored according to your needs:

    • Revision Color: Used to choose a color from the color menu. This color will then be applied to all the revised text and the border of the individual pages that contain the revisions. The border color will not be displayed in a printed or exported document.

    • Mark: The default mark is displayed on the right of the revised content. You can change this mark by choosing any symbol of your liking.

    • Date: The revision date.

    • Revision Text Style: The chosen formatting option is used to display revised text.

  5. Click Done and your new style will be available from now on.

Deleting or modifying existing revisions

Let’s take a look at how we can delete or modify already existing revisions:

  1. Select the style that you want to delete or modify.

  2. You can do either of the following:

    • Click on the – sign to delete the style

    • To modify, simply edit its values and click Done

Display options for revisions

Adobe Story also provides some display options for revisions, here’s how we can set them up:

  1. Select Production | Manage Revisions.

  2. In Viewing Options, the following display options can be personalized according to your needs:

    • Show Markup For: The options are Select All or Active. This will let you choose whether you want to have all the markups shown for all revisions or just the active ones.

    • Mark Position: The mark you set in Revision Style is set to the right-hand side by default; you can also change its position.

    • Show Date In Script Header and Footer: If you do not want to display the date, disable this option.

Locking or unlocking scene numbers

When you lock scene numbers, you prevent the renumbering of existing scenes whenever a new scene is added during production revisions.

When you do insert a new scene, Adobe Story will apply a number to the scene preceding it. For example, if you add a new scene in between scene 4 and 5, it will be numbered 4A. Here’s how we can lock and unlock scene numbers:

  1. Select Production | Manage Scene Numbers.

  2. Select the Keep Existing Scene Number option to lock all current scenes. To unlock, deselect Keep Existing Scene Number.

Omitting or unomitting scenes

Adobe Story allows you to remove a scene without affecting the scene numbers remaining in the script. The word OMITTED will appear at the location of the scene you’ve chosen to omit. You can, at a later date, unomit the scene if you chose and recover the content.

To omit a scene, simply place your cursor on the scene and then select Production | Omit Scene. To unomit a scene, place your cursor on the omitted scene and then select Production | Unomit Scene.

Printing production revisions

If you want to print your revisions, it is easy to do so; just follow these steps:

  1. Select File | Print.

  2. Choose any one of the following option:

    • Entire Script

    • All ChangedPages

    • Revision

  3. To print in color, select the Print Revised Text In Color option.

Identifying the total number of revised pages

Here’s how we can identify the total number of revised pages:

  1. Select Production | Manage Revisions.

  2. In Viewing Options, select All and click Done.

2 – Tagging

Along with the advent of the “cloud” concept, tagging individual words to content has become something of a norm in today’s online society. Adobe Story has incorporated a similar system. With tagging, you can tag words and phrases in your scripts automatically, or manually by using the Tagging Panel option. For example, “boom” can be tagged as “sound effect”.

Tagging panel

  1. To open the panel, you must be first in the AUTHORING view.

  2. Select View | Tagging Panel.

  3. The panel will open on the right-hand side of the document.

  4. To add tags to the panel, enter the name of the tag in the field next to the Create button:

  5. To delete a tag from the tagging panel, select the tag and then click on the Delete this Tag link:

Tagging automatically

You must be in the online mode for the Autotagging feature to work. It will not work in the offline mode.

The Autotagging feature is only available for English scripts.

This is how it’s done:

  1. Select File | Tagging | Start Autotagging. Or select it from the drop-down menu option in the Tagging panel:

Once you enable Autotagging, the script will be locked. You will have to wait until the process has completed before being able to edit the document; the following screenshot shows the message being displayed:

Tagging manually

  1. Select View | Tagging Panel.

  2. Choose the word or phrase you would like to tag. If what you’re choosing has already been tagged, it will be appended to the tag list for the word or phrase.

  3. Select a tag from Taglist in the Tagging panel.

  4. Do either of the following:

    • Select the Show In Bold option if you want the tagged words or phrases to be displayed in bold.

    • Select the Show Color option if you would prefer Story to display the selected color (you can choose a color for each tag with a color palette on the righthand of the tag in the Taglist panel) to the tag:

Finding words or phrases by their specific tag

Follow these steps to search for words or phrases with a specific tag:

  1. Disable visibility for all tags. Enable visibility for the tag that you want to search. To do this, simply click on the eye icon on the left-hand side of the tagged word:

  2. Use the arrow icons in the Tagging panel in order to navigate through the tags in the script. Only the visible tags will be shown.

Viewing tags associated with a word or phrase

To view tags associated with a word or a phrase, you can do either of the following:

  1. Select the word/phrase. The tags associated with the word/phrase will be highlighted in the Tagging panel. Scroll through the panel in order to view the tags associated with it:

  2. Move your mouse over the word/phrase. The information will be displayed in the tool tip:

  3. Hold Ctrl (Cmd on Mac) and double-click to view the associated tags:

Removing tags

  1. Over the word you wish to edit, hold Ctrl (Cmd on Mac) and double-click to bring up the Applied Tags panel.

  2. Click on the Remove This Tag icon for the chosen tag.

  3. Click Close.

  4. To remove all the tags, select File | Tagging | Remove All Tags.

  5. To remove all the manual tags, select File | Tagging | Remove All Manual Tags.

  6. To remove all the auto tags, select File | Tagging | Remove Auto Tags.

3 – Application for iOS-based devices

Adobe Story has an application for iOS-based devices. This application is available currently only in English. It allows you to read and review Adobe Story scripts and documents. It does not support AV (Audio Visual) scripts, Multicolumn scripts, and TV scripts as of yet.

Logging in

Before you start, make sure you have registered yourself with Adobe Story using the web or desktop application.

Use the same combination of e-mail address and password used on the full application with the iOS version. Accept the TOU before attempting to log in.

If you want to log out, select Account and then select Log Out.

Viewing documents, scene outline, and scenes

The ten most recently read files will be displayed upon logging in to the Adobe Story application.

  1. To view all the documents, click Categories.

  2. To view the scene outline, select the script in the Recent Files or Categories view.

  3. To view the contents of a scene, select the scene in the scene outline. Use the arrow icons to move among the scenes.

  4. To view Notifications, in the Recent Files view, select Notifications. A list of notifications is displayed. Highlighted notifications are for new ones.

Reviewing scripts

As long as you have author, co-author, or reviewer permissions, you will be able to review a script.

  1. Open the script and navigate to the scene.

  2. Do one of the following:

    • Double-click to select the content that you want to comment on. Click on Comment, or on the Add Comment button.

    • To comment on the content that has already been commented on, enter your comment in the Write New Comment textbox.

  3. To navigate comments, use the arrow icons.

  4. Click Post.

Viewing or deleting comments

  1. In the scene containing the comments, select Comments.

  2. The comment list is displayed. The paragraph containing the comment is highlighted when you select on a comment in the list.

  3. Select Delete after clicking on the desired comment.

Summary

In this article we learned about three of Adobe Story’s key features. We learned about track changes and production revisions. we learned about tagging, and learned about more about Adobe Story in iOS devices.

There is a whole lot more to learn as far as the features in Adobe Story is concerned.

Resources for Article :

Further resources on this subject:

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