Adobe has updated After Effects to 15.1 April 2018 release

Adobe has updated Adobe After Effects to version 15.1 April 2018 release.

Master Properties within the Essential Graphics Panel now show up when you nest a sequence in After Effects so you can control the effects within the current sequence along with master properties. And you can have different effects with the same sequence now allowing for all your changes without duplicating a composition. VERY COOL!

The puppet tool has become the Advanced Puppet Tool, with new functionality and smoother deformations. And it nows deals with deformations to curve and bend your animations.

More VR support includes Adobe Immersive Environment and improved VR Plane to Sphere.

Essential Graphics Panel has been improved. 2D point, scale and angle propeties. You can add all transform group properties. You can drag multiple selected properties. You can undo and redo adding removing and reordering properties. When you duplicate a composition in the project panel it also duplicated properties and comments. You can also right click a property in the essential graphics panel and reveal it in the timeline.

You can now use the Property Link pick whip to create complex animations so you don’t need to use expressions. It is in the parent & link section.

You can now open a Motion Graphics Template as a project.

There are Data-driven animation improvements, with support for comma or tab separated value files. Each individual property has an expression applied.

The Video Limiter is GPU accelerated and compresses luminance and chorminace.

The Lumetri Color Custom Lut Directory works in After Effects as well as Premiere Pro.

Improved GPU memory usage.

Grain effects CPU performance has been improved.

Added Video formats, and hardware acceleration for h.264 in windows as well as dropping quicktime 7 era formats and codecs.

A new importer for BMP, FIG and animated GIF that no longer depends on quicktime.

Team Projects has been improved with improved presence for online collaborators, better project management and render a team project using teamproject flag.

The missing files dialog has been consolidated to show all the missing files.

You can disable the missing fonts dialogue.

You can disable proxies for multiple footage items.

You can copy and paste in the project panel into a selected folder.

You can drag properties from the timeline panel to the composition panel to create text layers. And use value of text layer to represent a value for JSON data sources.

You can center anchor points in new shape layers. This is an option in preferences.

You can create shapes or masks from text creates a layer above the selected layer.

Darken, Lighten and Soft Light blend modes have been updated to the same engine as photoshop.

Layer menus command has been cosolidated.

Looking forward to trying it.

Adobe Updates Premiere Pro CC to versions 12.1 April 2018

Adobe just updated Adobe Premiere Pro CC to version 12.1 April 2018.

Adobe Lumetri Color has been updated, and you can now compare your shots while color correcting either side by side or split screen.

They have also added an FX Bypass option to temporarily turn an effect on and off, and reset an effect.

There is also a new Match Color across shots with a single button click using Adobe Sensei technology.

They have added a new Lumetri Color Custom LUT Directory and they will show up in Creative Looks dropdown or the Input and Output LUT’s come from the Technical directory. Thee are both local user and all user directories.

These can be found for a local on a mac at:

/Users/<user_name>/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/LUTs/Creative

 
/Users/<user_name>/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/LUTs/Technical

Or for all users on a mac at:

/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/LUTs/Creative

 
/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/LUTs/Technical

These can be found for local users on a mac at:

C:Users<user_name>AppDataRoamingAdobeCommonLUTsCreative

 
C:Users<user_name>AppDataRoamingAdobeCommonLUTsTechnical

Or for all users on windows at:

C:Users<user_name>AppDataRoamingAdobeCommonLUTsCreative

 
C:Users<user_name>AppDataRoamingAdobeCommonLUTsTechnical

Premiere Pro now has the Essential Sound Panel within Premiere Pro and it has Auto-Duck for Music.

And you can now directly open a premiere pro sequence in Adobe Audition to save steps.

For Graphics, you can search for Motion Graphics Templates across local folders, creative cloud libraries and Adobe Stock.

You can now create Gradients and Shapes in the Essential Graphics Panel with editable opacity.

You can replace Motion Graphics Templates with new versions by alt/option dragging an updated template onto one in your sequence, and you can chose to replace one instance or all in the sequence.

You can now toggle animation for each property of graphics layers in the essential graphics panel.

There is an improved interface and new controls for Motion Graphics Templates including 2D position, rotation and scale.

There are VR enhancements for immersive monitor support, and Windows Mixed Reality as well as improved VR Plane to Sphere.

Team Support has updated, with improved tracking of online collaborators. There is also better project management, and view read only versions of your project.

The Timecode panel has been improved with more options for viewing.

The Video Limiter has been improved and it can be added per shot or as an output effect.

You can now Copy and Paste sequence markers.

There has been H.264 Hardware acceleration in Windows 10 with 6h generation or later intel core processors.

File formats have been added for Canon C200, Sony Venice, and Red Image Processing Pipeline. Also Quicktime 7 era formats and codes have been dropped.

Tutorials have been added within the app from the new project as well as the learn workspace.

Awesome, can’t wait to try it out.

WTF Adobe has EOLed Adobe Muse!

You can see the announcement right from Adobe, they haved end of lifed Adobe Muse! There newest web design program is poof up in smoke! WTF! And it isn’t like it is just a program we purchased but that we have continued to pay for in a subscription!

They already killed Adobe SpeedGrade once it became an indispensable part of my workflow and now they are killing Muse with which I have sites I am paid to update and maintain and have paid a lot of money in plug ins for.

And it isn’t like they have a replacement! They are just killing it all together, just like SpeedGrade.

Honestly this is starting to make Adobe feel about as trustworthy as Apple. They killed Color, Shake, DVD Studio Pro, Final Cut Pro 7, and now we have adobe following suite. At least with Apple though I wasn’t paying a subscription for the software month after month!

Fuck you Adobe! Fuck you!

Adobe has announced it’s next set of Premiere Pro features

Adobe has announced the next set of features that will be added to Premiere Pro this year. You can read about them at the Adobe Blog.

Strangely they aren’t going into the features that I am most excited about, which the Premiere Bro Blog actually does.

Adobe is mostly focusing on it’s new VR abilities which are extensive, though something I likely will never use. And then it’s shared projects features, which will be awesome. Much more AVID like abilities in sharing projects and locking aspects of projects. And the Responsive Design tools sounds great with more ability to edit graphics without having to open premiere.

And in their they mention that you can finally open multiple projects at the same time, much like Final Cut Pro could do! That is awesome!

What the Premiere Bro Blog mentions is being able to preview fonts in the Essential Graphics Panel and set favorite fonts (hopefully also a different default font), and an additional 8 label colors for a total of 16, which is small but awesome addition!

Adding LUTs to Adobe Premiere Pro, A PROBLEM WITH IT THAT YOU SHOULD KNOW

Many people know that LUTS or look up tables are a feature in Adobe Premiere’s Lumetri controls that you can use different settings to make camera RAW footage look good for rec 709 or whatever format you are editing in. And Premiere has some technical and various Creative LUTs to quickly fix or change footage. And you can use your own LUT, but you have to select that LUT individually every time from your hard drive, as there is no way to add it to the menus in Premiere or After Effects.

Well a quick Google search has various links to sites that explain how you can add your own LUTs to Premiere Pro. Here is one at Premium Beat. The thing is there is a problem with this method.

In this method you open the application package contents, go into the Contents/Lumetri/LUTs/Technical folder and add your LUT and restart the program. Obviously this is something that is changing the actual application so it should be done at your own risk, and any update will likely wipe out your LUTs, but if you are going to do it, YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS!

If you want the LUTs to work in Premiere and to be able to export them with Adobe Media Encoder or use them in Adobe After Effects you need to also install your LUTs into those programs as well. There is no central repository for these LUTs!

Now I have requested with Adobe that they add the ability to add your own LUTs to the menus in a central repository, but that doesn’t mean the feature will be added ever.

I created a new logo bumper for Whale of a Tale Productions in 4K

For quite some time I have been wanting a new Whale of a Tale Productions logo, and I have need for one in 4K as I have been posting some of my DJI Osmo Test Footage on YouTube.

I had recently upgraded a really old logo that had been NTSC to 4K, but wasn’t too impressed with the results, so I decided to create a new one that more closely resembled my new Business card.

So I went to trusty After Effects CC 2017 14.2, as well as Element 3D and Red Giant Tsunami and created the following logo bumper for Whale of a Tale Productions.

Someday I will tackle one in full 3D where the logo can interact with the water, but not right now. For now I am pretty happy with this one.

Adobe Feature Request Add X-Rite Video ColorChecker color Matching to Lumetri Color

Since Adobe has gotten rid of it’s professional Color Grading software SpeedGrade to instead just use the less powerful Lumetri Color within Premiere Pro (and now After Effects) it is missing powerful color correction tools. And it could really use some.

So I made a Adobe Creative Cloud feature request on adding support for X-Rite ColorChecker for Video to Lumetri. This would add a very powerful color matching tool, and alleviate me from having to go out to DaVinci Resolve as often.

Here is my feature request text:

Since removing SpeedGrade from Adobe Creative Cloud, there is only the less powerful Lumetri controls within Premiere Pro and After Effects there are not full pro color correction features within the creative Cloud. Now i have gone back to using DaVinci Resolve for complex grades and a tool that I use all the time is color matching using X-Rite ColorChecker for Video as well as the Passport model. It is an extremely powerful tool for color correction and really helps with color matching between various cameras. The addition of X-Rite color matching would greatly increase the power of Lumetri color tools. And it would alleviate me having to go out to DaVinci for a full grade as often.

I made new feedback to Adobe to bring SpeedGrade back to Creative Cloud

Anyone who reads my blog (I know there are not many of you, but there are some) should know how much I miss SpeedGrade. Creative Cloud used to have a full professional Color Program, and it’s replacement Lumetri is not a full replacement, but a small feature set. The ability to have a full feature set in a color correction suite and have it come back via direct link as a plug in was a huge asset that Adobe thew away completely.

So I made this comment in the Adobe Feedback Form.

Lumetri is great and all, but it is still barely a small feature set of Creative Cloud. And the old ability to create a full grade and have it come back in as a Lumetri effect was essential, especially for new features in the future. Before SpeedGrade I had used DaVinci resolve to finish a project because of it’s great power, but with SpeedGrade I was able to do everything and leave the effect not pre-rendered into footage after a grade. On some small projects I am able to use Lumetri, but it is not powerful enough. The Creative Cloud suite needs a full professional color suite, and it had one, and it is a huge loss missing it.

Adobe has updated Creative Cloud Video Apps in advance of NAB 2017

Adobe has beat NAB 2017 this year and updated all of it’s video tools.

You can check out the playlist of 23 videos about all the new features across the full suite.

Adobe Blogs also has info on all the updates.

I am most excited to see the Essential Sound Panel makes it way to Premiere Pro!

Having full Lumetri in After Effects is also very cool, and will be quite helpful, though as you know I still mourn the loss of SpeedGrade as Lumetri is not nearly as powerful. And that in many cases means I have to go to DaVinci instead of being able to finish within Creative Cloud.

I am also interested in the Essential Graphics Panel, which brings both direct graphics creation on the timelines as well as changes to templates made in After Effects.

I am also interested in seeing Camera Shake DeBlur and seeing how it does with Warp Stabilized Footage.

The new Multi-Channel tools in Audition are also intriguing, though I would be happier having them in Premiere (especially if I could automatically move multiracks to multiple tracks instead of a single track), as while I do finish some jobs using Audition and it’s Essential Sound Panel, but mostly I go to a mixer using ProTools.

And having Pond 5 in the Adobe Stock panel is a great addition.

Overall I always look forward to playing with the new features, and am glad they come out as often as they do.