Put more character into your video content: New tools for titles, graphics and animation

Search through graphics in the Text panel in the December release of Premiere Pro.

Modern creators, editors and animators understand that graphics add impact to video and Adobe gives them the tools to craft them. The December release of the Creative Cloud video applications expands on these capabilities with powerful text and shape tools in Premiere Pro and innovations that fast-track puppet design and animation in Adobe Character Animator. Also in this release, performance improvements and workflow refinements in Premiere Pro will help editors keep their creativity moving.

What’s new in Premiere Pro

New search and spell check tools for titles and graphics

Adobe invented much of the modern graphics toolset, and that pedigree shines brightly in the latest release of Premiere Pro. Using the new Text panel, first introduced for the Speech to Text and captions workflow, editors can now search all of the titles and graphics in their sequence and perform global Search and Replace along with spell checking. This makes it easy to correct typos or the spellings of names in sequences with dozens or even hundreds of graphics, which can save hours on larger projects. In addition to text searches, clicking on individual graphics within the Text panel provides an efficient way to navigate through sequences.

A new universal text engine makes it easy to work with different languages and scripts, even within the same graphic. Middle Eastern and South Asian creators using right-to-left scripts now have all the controls they need in the Essential Graphics panel.

New shape tools

New shape tools allow editors and creators to add polygons to their graphics with precision controls for sizing and the ability to add and adjust rounded corners. Users who are familiar with the Adobe design tools in applications like Photoshop and Illustrator will feel right at home with the improved shape tools in Premiere Pro.

Performance improvements

Premiere Pro allows users to take advantage of the latest technologies. New hardware acceleration for Apple M1 Pro and M1 Max systems delivers up to 5x faster performance for 4k and 8K ProRes formats. High resolution HEVC formats are also faster on all Apple silicon Macs running macOS 12.

Display technology optimizations on Windows systems with integrated GPUs will see playback performance improvements ranging from 5 percent to 40 percent across all formats. Color Match is now 30 percent faster, accelerating shot matching workflows, and two more effects are now GPU-accelerated.

What’s new in Character Animator

Start creating faster with Puppet Maker

Animation increases viewer engagement with video content and new Puppet Maker gives creators the tools they need to create, customize, and animate their own characters in Adobe Character Animator. Previously, users had to first build and rig a layered puppet in Photoshop or Illustrator, or use one of the pre-built puppets in Character Animator. Puppet Maker gives users the immediacy of starting in Character Animator and the freedom to design their own character from a variety of styles, without leaving the application.

Once built, creators can use their web cam or a connected camera to animate their character using their own voice, facial expressions, and body movements. Performance capture provides a highly interactive and efficient workflow for recording and refining animations and Puppet Maker makes this innovative toolset accessible to any content creators who want to incorporate animations in their content, such as social media posts, or characters in explainer videos.

Creating animations with text

The latest release of Character Animator expands the option for animators in other directions as well: New Transcript-based Lip Sync allows creators to animate their character’s mouth movements using written scripts or transcriptions, including transcripts generated with Speech to Text in Premiere Pro. Available for English only, the new feature delivers more accurate results, thanks to the power of Adobe Sensei.

What’s new in After Effects

The latest release of After Effects includes the new universal text engine, described above, and the latest version of Cinema 4D Lite with support for the full version of the Maxon Cinema 4D R25.

Building the tools our users need with public Beta

Adobe is committed to performance and ensuring that new features meet the needs of our users before going into the release versions of our applications. Public Beta makes this possible by inviting our user community to try features in development and share their feedback with our product teams. Beta builds of the Adobe video and audio applications can be installed via the Creative Cloud desktop application.

For more information on this release, visit the What’s New pages for Premiere Pro, After Effects and Character Animator.