Premiere Pro Introduces Powerful New Tools for Color, Graphics, and Audio

The latest update for Adobe Premiere Pro CC is focused on adding breadth and versatility to our most popular workflows – including color, graphics and audio, as well as enabling automated features powered by Adobe Sensei. New features for Lumetri Color, Essential Graphics, and Essential Sound maintain an editing-centric perspective, but help you deliver professional results faster.

Watch us live from NAB. Stay tuned to the Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Creative Cloud Video & Audio Facebook channels for live streams direct from NAB. We’ll begin April 6th at 9 a.m. PDT with Jason Levine walking you through the top features of this release live on the Creative Cloud YouTube channel. Subscribe to the channel for reminders, replays, interviews, and overviews.

Here’s more info on some of the highlights in this release, followed by a list of what’s new and a link to the list of bug fixes included with this update.

Lumetri Color Workflow: Comparison view, Color Match powered by Adobe Sensei, and new Limiter

https://www.youtube.com/embed/t0gNhshQX4c?list=PLD8AMy73ZVxUxU4fZA4DjhBVlYmqWUdNb

Compare the looks of two different shots across a sequence of shots and match colors while retaining skin tones with a single click.

Adjusting color and light as part of the editing process is the new norm — and that’s reflected in both the positive feedback we’ve received since the introduction of the Lumetri Color panel in 2015, and in the list of user requests we receive to add to its versatility.

This new release includes some major changes to the Lumetri workflow, and it starts with a simple, yet powerful, addition to your monitoring options. The new Comparison View can be used to compare how a look is evolving as you use the Lumetri controls by either displaying the current frame side by side or in split screen. When working in split view the Lumetri scopes will automatically appear in split view as well, making manual grading that much more precise. The view can also be set to side-by-side Shot Comparison to compare the shot you are currently grading to another shot in your sequence. Once this mode is on, you can select any frame from your current sequence for reference. We’ve included a slider to go through the sequence quickly, or you can simply click forward or backward arrows to go through your clips and find the perfect frame of reference.

Once your reference shot is in place, you can either grade to perfection manually or you can deploy the new Color Match feature, which sits right inside the Color Wheels & Match section. Color Match is powered by Adobe Sensei and uses Face Detection by default to allow for a balanced match centered around what’s usually most important to your work — making skin tones look their best. Face Detection in Color Match uses machine learning to sample the best possible match — but the process is still transparent. The Color Match values are dialed into the Color Wheels, making it easy to see what’s been done automatically, and even better, you can refine the result with confidence.

There’s a range of other Lumetri improvements such as the FX on/off toggle and reset right inside the Lumetri Color panel. And we’ve revisited the Color Limiter, which now includes a small range of meaningful presets, giving you a one-click solution combined with great looking image processing under the hood.

Essential Graphics Workflow: Improved user experience and finesse

Popularity of any tool in Premiere Pro usually comes with a lot of feedback — and this is a great opportunity to thank our users for presenting us with ideas and telling us how to make their lives easier.

Browsing for Motion Graphics templates is now extremely intuitive across your local template folder, CC Libraries, and Adobe Stock, all from within the Essential Graphics panel. This new search-based browser also supports Hover Scrub of Motion Graphics templates so you can see the full animation of the graphics you’re considering before adding them to your timeline.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/IAjr1zp3nxM?list=PLD8AMy73ZVxUxU4fZA4DjhBVlYmqWUdNb

Universally search and preview Motion Graphics templates from your local templates folder, Creative Cloud Libraries, or Adobe Stock right in the Essential Graphics panel to quickly find the template you need.

An improved interface and new controls make it easier to customize Motion Graphics templates created in Adobe After Effects CC, including adjusting the position, rotation, and scale of elements. And you can now edit text layers of the graphic by clicking on them in the Program Monitor. There’s also a new option to replace a template already in use in your sequence with an updated version coming in from After Effects, all while preserving the customizations already made.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/_-GFiSLw_vc?list=PLD8AMy73ZVxUxU4fZA4DjhBVlYmqWUdNb

An improved interface and new controls in the Essential Graphics panel make it easier to customize Motion Graphics templates created in After Effects.

Additionally, we’ve added a new and intuitive way of adding gradients to shape layers, and the ability to toggle on animation for graphic layers from within the Essential Graphics panel, allowing you to animate more quickly when working with graphics natively in Premiere Pro by recording your changes to position, scale, rotation, opacity, and anchor point as keyframes.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/JBUhFA01YmU?list=PLD8AMy73ZVxUxU4fZA4DjhBVlYmqWUdNb

Animate more quickly with the ability to toggle on animation for Position, Rotation, Anchor Point, Scale, and Opacity by clicking their icons in the Essential Graphics panel and then adjusting the property in the panel or by editing the graphic layer directly in the Program Monitor.

Essential Sound Workflow: Auto Ducking powered by Adobe Sensei

When we revealed Auto Ducking in Audition late last year, it created a big splash. Even if you’re used to ducking your music against dialog, it’s hard to deny that it’s a tedious, time-consuming process, and very linear by nature – you really haven’t been able to speed up that process, until recently. With the new Auto Ducking released in Audition in April of 2017, that changed dramatically. And now we’re responding to the large number of requests to make Auto Ducking part of the Essential Sound panel in Premiere Pro.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/rSRZx_3Ph-g?list=PLD8AMy73ZVxUxU4fZA4DjhBVlYmqWUdNb

The volume of music can be set to automatically lower when dialogue, sound effects, or other audio clips are detected, eliminating the need to manually adjust every point in the mix.

With Auto Ducking you can now make your dialog stand out from your music bed without ever having to leave Premiere Pro or call in an expert. Auto Ducking in Premiere Pro is powered by Adobe Sensei, so the algorithm used for analyzing both the dialog and the music track is already aware of the dynamics in your footage. It only takes seconds to duck music against dialog (or sound FX or Ambience – or all at once!) with a single click. Premiere Pro creates key-frames straight on the audio track so it’s easy to see what’s been applied to make your music play nice with dialog, and it’s equally simple to make changes by adjusting the overall settings in the Essential Sound panel or manually overriding a single event with key-frames.

Improvements across the board

Sometimes a small change can make a big difference, saving you lots of time. Here’s a list of other updates we made in that spirit.

Timecode Panel. See more display options in the Timecode Panel and show different information, such as In/Out, Duration, Absolute TC, Remaining TC, and Source TC.

Copy and paste Sequence markers. Copy and paste full fidelity Sequence markers when moving one or multiple clips, while preserving all marker information such as color, notes, and duration.

Enhanced support for Team Projects. Enhancements include improved tracking of collaborators, better project management, the ability to view read-only versions of your projects, and more.

Immersive monitor. This new panel inside the Adobe Immersive Environment gives a view of the full sphere of footage and can be used to rotate the current view in the head-mounted display.

Support for Windows mixed reality. Windows mixed reality headsets and controllers can now be used with the Adobe Immersive Environment on Windows. This gives users a broader range of hardware to edit and review VR 360 content.

New format support. New formats supported include RAW for Sony X-OCB (VENICE) and Canon Cinema RAW Light (C200).

Learning workspace. We’ve also expanded the Getting Started coach marks for users new to the application, and there’s a new workspace called “Learning” that includes a brand new Learn panel featuring workflow tutorials right inside in the application on the most popular topics for people getting started.

Get started with the new updates

There are a few things you’ll want to know before you update to the latest version of Premiere Pro:

  1. New releases of Adobe Creative Cloud applications overwrite prior installations by default. A parallel install of version 2018.0 and 2018.1 isn’t possible.
  2. Projects saved in this new version can’t be opened with previous versions of Premiere Pro.
  3. If you’re in the middle of a project, it is highly recommended to wait until your current project is done before updating your software.

Give us feedback. We’re eager to hear what you think we should be doing next, and that’s why we’re excited to announce a new and interactive way of sending us feedback. Moving forward, all of our Creative Cloud video applications are connected to a UserVoice forum and this is the best place for you to create a feature request, see and vote on what others have suggested, and log any issues you’ve encountered.