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Every year Creative Cloud for Video keeps improving and this year is no exception.

New Software Spotlight: Adobe Creative Cloud for Video June 2015

With Adobe Creative Cloud now beginning its third year, Adobe is coming out with a major update to the platform. In this release are 15 separate applications that are all getting updates. There are also new connected mobile apps and updates to existing ones. There are new services and new offerings for professionals and enterprises. There is even a new offering for stock photography where you can purchase images and sell your work. There are a lot of exciting changes coming.

One of the larger areas of update is within Creative Cloud for Video. At its core it is Adobe bringing you a complete desktop filmmaking system, but that does not mean that you are tied to your desktop. This year you will find many expanded capabilities for collaboration, including easier asset sharing, mobile apps will allow you to take your creativity on the road yet remain connected to your home base, and many other enhancements.

The whole goal for Creative Cloud for Video 2015 is to enhance collaboration. That is, making all of the tools within Creative Cloud that apply to video work better together, as well as allowing you to continue to work and create when you are away from your desktop.

Adobe Premiere Pro CC
Adobe Premiere Pro CC

The tools that come with Creative Cloud (CC) for video are Adobe Premiere Pro CC, Adobe After Effects CC, Adobe Audition CC, Adobe Prelude CC, Adobe SpeedGrade CC, Adobe Character Animator, Adobe Premiere Clip, and Adobe Hue CC. You can see more online about this package and check out the various membership plans at the Adobe Creative Cloud web page.

Adobe Premiere Pro CC June 2015

Adobe Premiere Pro CC
Adobe Premiere Pro CC

Adobe Premiere Pro is a real-time, timeline-based video editing software application widely used in the film and video industry. Adobe Premiere Pro CC reduces the complex process of video production by integrating multiple products such After Effects and Audition to make each step more efficient and give you more time to work your story.

With the newly enhanced color workspace with Lumetri Color panel, you have the 32-bit color science of SpeedGrade and the functionality of Adobe Lightroom for an improved creative environment. The Lumetri Color panel provides a toolset for working with color along with a workflow that has, until now, not been available in any other editing application. You can enhance the appearance of your video, apply curves and hue saturation, and use a three-way color corrector to work with shadows, mid-tones, and highlights. You will be better able to work with color, everything from making simple color corrections to collaborating with professional colorists, right within Premiere Pro.

Combine this with the Creative Cloud Libraries and you now have flexibility to keep your graphic files with you wherever you go. Using the Adobe CreativeSync technology, you can work in a mobile app such as the new Adobe Hue, or create an asset in Photoshop, and directly access the file in Premiere Pro. You can even share you resources with others.

The addition of Morph Cut to your list of tools will greatly enhance the jump-cuts in your video, reducing and perhaps eliminating the need for b-roll entirely. Morph Cut takes your transitions, such as removing pauses in your footage, and morphs them between the scenes, making the footage appear almost seamless.

Finally, by using the mobile app Premiere Clip on your phone or tablet, you can now capture and assemble video anywhere. You can do basic edits on the road and when you need full power, just open up Premiere Pro and the assets are there waiting for you, including all of the edits, cues and looks you set in Premiere Clip.

After Effects CC June 2015

Adobe After Effects CC
Adobe After Effects CC

After Effects CC is digital motion graphics and compositing software used by motion graphic designers, visual artists, and video editors in both film and video post-production. It uses a system of layers organized on a timeline to create composites from still images and motion footage, such as from video files.

It has become the industry standard for visual effects and motion graphics because it offers flexible tools to prepare dynamic media and integrates well with other tools used in the industry. You can find imagery created in After Effects in everything from motion pictures to cell phones to websites.

As with Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects is also connected through the Creative Cloud Libraries, which means that when you’re connected, all of your assets are right at hand. All your still images, vector graphics, and other items from Photoshop, Illustrator, and mobile apps and online services are now at your disposal anywhere you go.

After Effects 2015 now comes with improved previews, such as Uninterrupted Preview, which lets you change up properties, resize interfaces, and view design iterations without having to stop your composition playback. The Face Tracker not only gives you the ability to track the movement of a face – in case you need to apply an effect through time, such as a blur to protect identity – but even lets you get down to the point of the opening of an eye, if for example you want to change the eye color in one eye.

Adobe Character Animator June 2015

Adobe Character Animator
Adobe Character Animator

New to this year’s video collection is Adobe Character Animator, which works in conjunction with After Effects and provides the ability to animate 2D characters. Through the use of rigging controls and video tracking from your webcam you can take characters created in Illustrator or Photoshop and give them motion and life.

With Animator you have a lot of control over the movements of your characters. By using the Face Tracker from After Effects you can control movement of facial features. You can control how the body contracts or expands, and how the arms and legs move in relation to the body.

Adobe Hue CC June 2015

Adobe Hue CC
Adobe Hue CC

The newest mobile app this year is Adobe Hue. Adobe Hue lets you capture color and lighting wherever you are. Say you are walking through an airport and the color scheme of, say, a billboard catches your eye. In the past you would have stopped and taken a picture for reference, but since a lot of things affect the capture of the image, when you get back home something may be lost in translation.

Now, with Adobe Hue, you can capture all of the subtle colors that make up that scene. It will capture the colors that exist; you can move your mobile device around the scene to capture exactly what drew your eye, and it lets you adjust the intensity by directing where the mid-tone exists. Then you save the look to your Creative Cloud Library and it is ready for use.

Adobe Audition CC June 2015

Adobe Audition CC
Adobe Audition CC

Adobe Audition CC 2015 is the latest release of Adobe’s comprehensive Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) production solution. It is a personal recording studio with a multi-track mix/edit environment that you can use to create your own music, record and mix a project, produce a radio spot, clean up audio, and compile and edit a soundtrack.

By using Audition in conjunction with Premiere Pro you can enhance and create the sounds that will be used in your video. You can send video sequences from Premiere Pro directly to Audition and view the video in its native format with no need for file conversion. The resolution and frame rates will remain the same and you don’t have to render to play the video.

If you make edits to a track, such as levels, fade, and EQ, you can replace the track with a better one and your edits will remain via Live re-linking. There are also improved precision and workflows.

Adobe Media Encoder CC June 2015

Adobe Media Encoder CC
Adobe Media Encoder CC

Adobe Media Encoder allows you to optimize your video regardless of screen size, resolution, or venue. It has very tight integration with both Premiere Pro and After Effects and uses background rendering to deliver high-quality workflow.

This year’s version provides the ability to help you conform to precise content durations through the use of Time Tuner. Once you get the content that works for your project you can use Time Tuner to adjust to the needed delivery specifications. It does not matter if you need a assortment of spots that must be 25 seconds, or you need to provide a video that runs 42:22:00 to meet a broadcaster’s requirements.

Also added this year is the ability to create content with up to 5.1 channels of Dolby Digital Plus support, which will allow you to deliver surround sound to the big screen, home theaters, and the web. With QuickTime channelization you can export multiple audio channel configurations to a single QuickTime file that houses all of your audio channel options.

Adobe Prelude CC June 2015

Adobe Prelude CC
Adobe Prelude CC

Adobe Prelude CC provides a unified interface for ingesting and logging workflows. This way you can work faster and stay organized as well as streamline your production process. For example, if you are a producer you can prepare raw news reports on the way out of your location shoot. If you are a director, you can create dailies and distribute them to reviewers and editors without the overhead of a full-blown non-linear editing system, so you can easily show how the story should be told.

Also you now can record voice-over narration with a much more efficient workflow for fast turnaround. You can create a rough cut version to get you up and running and later create the final finished piece when you are ready.

Adobe SpeedGrade CC

Adobe SpeedGrade CC
Adobe SpeedGrade CC

Adobe SpeedGrade CC provides color grading and look design. With the Lumetri Deep Color Engine, SpeeGrade lets you add professional color correction and look design to your post-production workflow. You can bring your Premiere Pro projects directly into SpeedGrade using DirectLink to maintain your Lumetri Looks while making additional color-grade adjustments using the tools that colorists expect.

Adobe Creative Cloud membership is $49.99 per month, with an annual contract. A special introductory offer of $29.99 per month for existing CS individual customers is also available. You can subscribe to individual items as well. If, for example, you use only Adobe Photoshop, you can license it for $19.99/month. A photography membership at $9.99/month is also available (to anyone).

Every year Creative Cloud for Video keeps improving and this year is no exception. Everything focuses on Premiere Pro, and when I am working with video that is generally where it begins and ends for me. I frequently go into After Effects, Audition, and SpeedGrade, but the core of my work is in Premiere Pro.

The major updates to Premiere Pro, with Lumetri Color Panel, Morph Cut, and the enhanced collaboration capabilities are great, as is the updated and new mobile integration. Other additions that I really like are Face Tracker, Adobe Hue, and the Creative Cloud Libraries. The other enhancements are like icing on the cake.

Normally I would say I very highly recommend this upgrade, but if you have a subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud, then you already have the upgrade.

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About T. Michael Testi

Photographer, writer, software engineer, educator, and maker of fine images.

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