15 Pro Tips for Adobe XD Users

Issue #1, June 2019

Published in

UX Planet

5 min readJun 24, 2019

This is a series of posts for Adobe XD users who want to make their work more efficient. All that you find below are used with the permission of Elaine Chao. In this issue, you will find tips for working with:

💎 Design Assets
🎨 Colors
📖 Typography
🌫️ Opacity and Blur
📐 Corners and Geometric Shapes

💎 Design Assets

1. Quick way for naming assets

Want to name your assets really quickly? Press Tab instead of Enter to skip to the next line in the assets panel.

2. Linked assets

You can import an entire assets panel from a cloud document to any other document by clicking on the plus button in the upper right hand corner of the panel.

3. Highlight on Canvas

Want to see where you’ve used a particular style? Open your assets panel and select “Highlight on Canvas” in the context menu to get a sense of where it’s used.

🌈 Colors

4. Create the perfect gradient

The control points will snap to the bounding boxes of the object to help you make the perfect gradient. You can grab the primary handle in the radial gradient canvas control to change the radius of the gradient.

You can quickly add color stops by clicking on either the gradient stripe in the color picker or on the gradient control on the object itself.

And if you decide to delete some colors stops, you can do that by dragging them off the gradient color stripe. You can also delete by selecting the stop and pressing the Delete key.

5. Quickly apply a global color to a border

Quickly apply a color to a border by selecting “Apply to Border” in the context menu in the assets panel.

6. Add color as a global color

You can add a color as a global color in the assets panel by clicking on the + button under the “Colors” section.

📖 Typography

7. Return to the default line spacing

To return to the default line spacing enter 0 in the line spacing parameter in the property inspector.

8. Quickly switch between area text and point text

You can quickly switch between area text and point text through the property inspector.

🌫️ Opacity and Blur

9. Quickly change the opacity

With an object selected, you can quickly change the opacity by typing numbers. Press 1 for 10%, 2 for 20%, on up to 9 for 90%, and 0 for 100%.

10. Background Blur

Click on Background Blur to convert your object into a blur mask. Everything underneath the object will be blurred out.

11. Create Light and Dark iOS overlays

XD default blur defaults mimics an iOS Light setting: Blur Amount 30, Brightness 15, Effect Opacity 0%.

If you want the iOS Dark overlay default, you should set your black blur object to 25, 0 , 55%

📐 Corners and Geometric Shapes

12. Adjusting corners of the objects

Drag one of the corners in a basic rectangle to adjust all of the corner radii at the same time.

Want to adjust the corners independently? No problem! Simply hold down Alt/Opt while dragging the corner to detach it from the others.

13. Open up the path

With the path object selected, press “P” to engage the pen tool. You’ll be able to open up the path then at a single point, and can continue to draw from there.

14. Converting a Boolean group to a path

You can make deeper refinements to a Boolean group by selecting it and converting it to a path (Cmd+8 Mac, Ctrl+8 Win). Doing so removes the editability of the Boolean group, but enables you to edit points and open the path.

15. Unlinking the control points in Bezier curve

Unlink the control points in your Bezier curve by holding down the Alt/Opt key when you first drag. After the initial drag, the two control points will be unlinked.