Adobe MAX 2016: The Future of Creativity
Creative Cloud 2017 Steals the Show at Adobe MAX
Adobe MAX is a celebration of innovation and creativity for Adobe and their customers. This year's Adobe MAX conference marks the release of Creative Cloud 2017, as well as several exciting product announcements and beta programs. Here are some of the headliners from the General Session of Day 1 at Adobe MAX 2016. Followed by a few practical editing tips from one of the Premiere Pro sessions.
Opening Keynote
Adobe MAX 2016 kicked off with Adobe President and CEO, Shantanu Narayen ushering in the future of creativity and design for Adobe Creative Cloud. Shantanu is an inspiring speaker. Listening to his perspective, you get the impression he must meditate all day on how technology can empower creativity.
Shantanu reminded the audience of Adobe's mission of changing the world through digital experiences. He emphatically declared it is creativity of Adobe's customers that inspires and drives the innovation of their products. Adobe MAX reinstates the thrill of being a participant in the Adobe creative community that is making the world a better place.
ADOBE SENSEI
One of Shantanu's most exciting announcements was Adobe Sensei, the next level of machine learning and artificial intelligence that is already powering the design and delivery of Adobe's digital experiences.
This level of technology is way over the head of Premiere Bro. The best way I can describe Adobe Sensei is exactly what Shantanu said it's not: magic. It's science that leverages massive amounts of Adobe content and data in order to understand the meaning and sentiment of images and documents. According to Adobe, Sensei is already driving Adobe's Cloud solutions, and has specifically been deployed in Creative Cloud in forms such as image, font and facial awareness. These capabilities are clearly visible in new features like Adobe Stock's visual search, Photoshop's face-aware liquify, and Character Animator's auto lip sync.
Creative Cloud 2017
The remainder of the General Session was hosted by Bryan Lamkin. He's a guy Premiere Bro looks up to. Literally. The man is 6 foot 7 inches according to his bio on the Adobe blog. Bryan introduced Creative Cloud 2017, which was released only moments before he took the stage. For each major product update, he invited someone onstage to demo it.
Some of the following highlights are bulleted in order to expeditiously get to the unveiling of Premiere Pro CC 2017. That's what we all want to see, right? In full transparency, it will be obvious which product updates Premiere Bro cares about based on the amount of description.
Adobe Stock
Adobe Stock is now home to over 60 million royalty-free stock photos, videos, illustrations, graphics, 3D assets and templates. Adobe Stock recently launched a stock contributor site, where photographers and filmmakers can sell their content to the world's largest creative community.
As mentioned earlier in regards to Adobe Sensei integration, Adobe Stock now supports visual searching. On the Adobe Stock website, users can drag and drop an image into the browser, and Adobe Stock will analyze for similar results. Inside Photoshop, users can use the Marquee tool to select a specific area for Adobe Stock to analyze for related results.
Character Animator
How can I describe the excitement of Character Animator? Try this: Character Animator is breaking up the ground on which the game it changed is played. In other words, it's a ground-breaking-game-changer! It transforms traditional animation into a live performance experience. To Premiere Bro, Character Animator is the embodiment of Adobe's commitment to innovation.
In honor of Character Animator's historical debut on The Simpsons, Bryan Lamkin welcomed Nancy Cartwright, voice of Bart Simpson, and David Silverman, animator and director for The Simpsons. Nancy gave a wonderful anecdote on the importance of making relationships with other creatives because you never know when collaborative opportunities will emerge.
Project Felix
Project Felix is a new Adobe app currently in development that greatly simplifies 3D compositing for designers. Users will be able to intuitively select 3D elements with content-aware tools, and easily make lighting and texture adjustments to blend 3D objects into a photo-realistic image. Felix will be available as a public beta by the end of the year.
Adobe XD Beta
This happened...
Typekit Marketplace
And this happened...
Premiere Pro CC and After Effects CC
Finally, my favorite part of the morning: Jason Levine demoing the new features in Premirere Pro CC and After Effects CC. Jason's onstage charisma is incomparable!
Jason even got the crowd singing! Thanks to Premiere Gal for providing the video proof. Was anyone else watching the live stream clapping along at the office with headphones on?
Jason started his presentation with a feature that has revolutionized color workflows for video creators: the Lumetri Color panel. He specifically drew attention to the latest feature in the Lumetri Color panel, the HSL Secondaries, which received improved color pickers in CC 2017.
Next, Jason gave an overview of Adobe Stock integration inside Premiere Pro CC. Using the Libraries panel, editors can search and purchase Adobe stock content inside Premiere Pro CC, and have all their timeline and clip adjustments remain completely intact. It's amazing! Also, looking over my notes, I'm reminded that Jason had an incident with "hair in the throat" during this segment of his presentation.
Moving on to After Effects CC, Jason demoed the new Text Template project file ".aecap", and how it can easily be imported into Premiere Pro CC with Typekit font support. This new file format streamlines Text Template workflows, and sets the stage for greater functionality between After Effects CC and Premiere Pro CC.
Jason quickly showed how the new Cinema 4D render engine in After Effects CC can be used to quickly extrude text into realistic 3D objects.
Social Publishing Panel (beta)
Lastly (and with much hype) Jason ripped the curtain off a new Premiere Pro CC feature that took many users by surprise: the Social Publishing panel.
This new panel delivers streamlined, cross-platform publishing to the major social sites, all within Premiere Pro CC. But there's more! The Social Publishing panel also provides strategic options for custom thumbnails, keyword presets, content scheduling and recommended publishing times for maximum engagement. At this time, Adobe is inviting people to sign up for the Social Publishing panel beta program.
Premiere Pro Session Tips
We wrap up this Adobe MAX 2016 summary with some insightful live Tweets by Dylan Osborn from the session: Adobe Premiere Pro: An Introduction to the Basics presented by Adobe's David Helmly and Karl Soule. Don't let the "basics" part mislead you to think these tips are for beginners. Keep in mind that both Dave and Karl are senior ranking Adobe employees who know Premiere Pro CC from the inside out. Big thanks to Dylan for providing these Tweets!
“I had no idea you could press a letter key in any Premiere Pro drop down menu to go to that part of the menu. For example: in H.264 export presets menu, hit “Y” and it takes you down to “YouTube.””
Helpful Links
Day 1 at #AdobeMax by Premiere Gal
Adobe Impresses with New Creative Cloud Features by Clint Till
This post was assembled based on the Adobe MAX Online stream. Were you at Adobe MAX 2016 in person? Or in some other state? Have some thoughts or insights on the new Creative Cloud 2017 features unveiled at Adobe MAX 2016? Please share them in the comments below!
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