By Brady Betzel

NAB is just under a week away, and we are here to share some of Adobe’s latest Creative Cloud offerings. And there are a few updates worth mentioning, such as a freeform project panel in Premiere Pro, AI-driven Auto Ducking for Ambience for Audition and addition of a Twitch extension for Character Animator. But, in my opinion, the Adobe After Effects updates are what this year’s release will be remembered by.

Content Aware: Here is the before and after. Our main image is the mask.

There is a new expression editor in After Effects, so us old pseudo-website designers can now feel at home with highlighting, line numbers and more. There are also performance improvements, such as faster project loading times and new deBayering support for Metal on macOS. But the first prize ribbon goes to the Content-Aware fill for video powered by Adobe Sensei, the company’s AI technology. It’s one of those voodoo features that when you use it, you will be blown away. If you have ever used Mocha Pro by BorisFX then you have had a similar tool known as the “Object Removal” tool. Essentially, you draw around the object you want to remove, such as a camera shadow or boom mic, hit the magic button and your object will be removed with a new background in its place. This will save users hours of manual work.

Freeform Project panel in Premiere.

Here are some details on other new features:

● Freeform Project panel in Premiere Pro— Arrange assets visually and save layouts for shot selects, production tasks, brainstorming story ideas, and assembly edits.
● Rulers and Guides—Work with familiar Adobe design tools inside Premiere Pro, making it easier to align titling, animate effects, and ensure consistency across deliverables.
● Punch and Roll in Audition—The new feature provides efficient production workflows in both Waveform and Multitrack for longform recording, including voiceover and audiobook creators.
● Surprise viewers in Twitch Live-Streaming Triggers with Character Animator Extension—Livestream performances are enhanced where audiences engage with characters in real-time with on-the-fly costume changes, impromptu dance moves, and signature gestures and poses—a new way to interact and even monetize using Bits to trigger actions.
● Auto Ducking for ambient sound in Audition and Premiere Pro — Also powered by Adobe Sensei, Auto Ducking now allows for dynamic adjustments to ambient sounds against spoken dialog. Keyframed adjustments can be manually fine-tuned to retain creative control over a mix.
● Adobe Stock now offers 10 million professional-quality, curated, royalty-free HD and 4K video footage and Motion Graphics templates from leading agencies and independent editors to use for editorial content, establishing shots or filling gaps in a project.
● Premiere Rush, introduced late last year, offers a mobile-to-desktop workflow integrated with Premiere Pro for on-the-go editing and video assembly. Built-in camera functionality in Premiere Rush helps you take pro-quality video on your mobile devices.

The new features for Adobe Creative Cloud are now available with the latest version of Creative Cloud.