Just in time for 2018’s NAB Show, kicking off in Las Vegas on April 7th, Adobe has announced significant enhancements to its suite of professional video tools as well as improvements to the company’s photography software.
Today’s changes come as an update to the 2018 release of Creative Cloud, announced last fall at Adobe MAX. Adobe says the new features are in response to growing pressure on content creators to produce more work of higher quality in a shorter amount of time.
Premiere Pro CC
New Adobe Sensei-powered features headline the changes brought to the company’s non-linear editor. Shots can now be color matched with one click using Lumetri adjustments. This allows editors to quickly achieve visual consistency between shots and even match a desired look from reference photos. Shots can be compared with a new split-view.
Autoducking powered by Adobe Sensei is also new to Premiere Pro, which automatically adjusts soundtrack audio around dialog.
After Effects CC
Adobe’s visual effects tool has been updated with support for applying changes to individual effects across multiple versions of a composition. The feature takes advantage of a new tool called Master Properties. A new Advanced Puppet tool makes complex motions and fluid animations faster and easier to achieve.
Adobe has also focused on 360-degree editing workflows in today’s release of After Effects. Adobe Immersive Environment is now available within the application and is supported by Microsoft’s Windows Mixed Reality Platform.
Audition CC
Projects created in Premiere Pro can now be natively opened in Audition to make editing workflows more efficient. The Tracks panel has been redesigned, and support for album art and scripting has been added.
Character Animator CC
A library of behaviors and custom triggers has been added to Character Animator, designed to make routine tasks more efficient. Behaviors can be modified or added with new intuitive drop targets.
These updates, along with other performance enhancements, interface tweaks, workflow improvements, and better integration with Adobe Stock are rolling out today. For a full list of changes, check out Adobe’s website.
Lightroom and Camera Raw Profiles
Adobe also significantly enhanced its Camera Profiles feature today for Lightroom Classic CC, Lightroom CC, and Adobe Camera Raw, renaming it simply “Profiles.” In addition to making the feature easier to access, 6 new Adobe Raw profiles, 40 new Creative profiles, and a Profile Browser have been added.
Photographers commonly use profiles when editing photos to give their images a particular look and feel. Adobe has outlined the intent of each of their own new RAW profiles, including a new default called Adobe Color:
Several third-party preset makers have been working with Adobe to create profiles, many of which are already available.
Adobe Monochrome has been carefully tuned to be a great starting point for any black and white photograph, resulting in better tonal separation and contrast than photos that started off in Adobe Standard and were converted into black and white.
Adobe Portrait is optimized for all skin tones, providing more control and better reproduction of skin tones. With less contrast and saturation applied to skin tones throughout the photo, you get more control and precision for critical portraiture.
Adobe Landscape, as the name implies, was designed for landscape photos, with more vibrant skies and foliage tones.
Adobe Neutral provides a starting point with a very low amount of contrast, useful for photos where you want the most control or that have very difficult tonal ranges.
Adobe Vivid provides a punchy, sautéed starting point.
Alongside enhancements to profiles, Lightroom is receiving new features on every platform today. Lightroom Classic CC has received interface tweaks, Lightroom CC for Mac and Windows now supports NAS devices and a new filtering option, and Lightroom CC for iOS has added a geometry tab, film grain simulation, left-hand editing on iPad, and improved sharing and camera model support.
For more information on today’s photography application updates, check out the full list of changes on Adobe’s website.
Creative Cloud is available for new customers as an annual plan for $52.99/month. The full plan includes all of Adobe’s creative applications and 100GB of cloud storage. A photography plan consisting of Lightroom CC, Lightroom Classic CC, Photoshop CC, and 20GB of cloud storage starts at $9.99/month.
