Pretty much each June, Adobe releases a ton of updates across its ecosystem. Yeah there’s Photohop, Lightroom and Premiere Pro getting updates. But, there’s also the updates to Illustrator, XD, Rush and more in the suite of creative apps. Here’s a brief rundown of the updates. I’ll focus more on the apps I use, but I’ll share a link to information sharing the other app updates.

Empowering Through Innovation

Leveraging AI and hardware acceleration, a lot of the updates for the Adobe suite focuses more on automation to complete repetitive actions faster as well as performance boosts. First up, the actual Creative Cloud desktop app which saw a redesign in 2019 is updated with another redesign. There’s more of a focus on cloud syncing and collaboration as many content creators of the world are still practicing remote work from home. With collaboration in mind, Adobe also focuses on community where other creatives may want to collaborate or share projects they’re working on. Enter the Behance integration.

I use the CC app in my workflow when I’m switching between computers. Sometimes, I may need to use assets on a laptop instead of my usual workstation. The CC app syncs up those motion graphic templates, fonts or other assets pretty easily and is quite useful because my CC Libraries are always right where I need them.

Photoshop updates

Just recently the Photoshop news was around mobile. Whether it’s the announcement of Photoshop Camera moving out of beta to a public release for iOS and Android users, or new features showing up on Photoshop for iPad. Yes, those are cool things, especially the Photoshop for iPad updates, but the desktop app has gotten some love. I’ll come back to the iPad version in a moment. Anyway. . . .

On the desktop, Photoshop gets a few bells and whistles to once again help you with selections. I remember the “select subject” feature launch back in 2018 and how much it kicked ass, but this feature continues to get better as it leverages the power of Adobe Sensei AI to not only “select subject,” but differentiate if your subject is part of a portrait or just an object in the scene. Allow me to explain.

Let’s say you’re wanting to make a selection of your model from your headshot session and place them on a different background. The select subject feature works, but you’d typically have to refine the selection around the hair because wispy hair is always difficult to select. Adobe’s AI now recognizes the selection is part of a portrait and actively tries to select wispy hair strands with a single click. Brilliant.

In addition to Photoshop’s select subject, my other favorite update mentioned is for the Adobe Camera Raw filter. If you’ve watched episodes of Hands-On Photography, you may have heard me mention that sometimes you’ll need a bit of a “Lightroom interface from Photoshop.” That’s when I launch the Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) filter. Well, now ACR has been updated to have an interface that pretty much the same experience you can find in Lightroom (not Lightroom Classic). This is a good move. The interface is more intuitive now for people diving into ACR for the first time.

Photoshop on the iPad is slowly getting better. I like the idea of using Photoshop on iPad, but it wasn’t quite ready for some of the things I’d like to do with filters and raw files. Currently, there’s still no direct import for raw photo files, but now there’s a direct link between Photoshop on the iPad and Lightroom on iPad. In my workflow on desktop, there are many times I’ll leave Lightroom mid post-processing to make a manipulation in Phototoshop. This is a seamless feature with Adobe’s “dynamic link.” I’d like to have this functionality on mobile. With this update, we’re there. You can toggle back and forth on an image with this new linkage of the apps, now.

Get more information on all of the Photoshop updates via Adobe here on its blog.

Lightroom

Lightroom (Classic) is updated with yet another performance boost. Let’s face it, as much as I love Lightroom Classic, it’s slow in comparison to Capture One and other competitors. It’s definitely gotten a lot better, but there’s still room for improvement. The recent update continues to leverage hardware acceleration.

The HSL adjustments section got a nice feature. HSL stands for Hue, Saturation and Luminance, by the way. Typically when you use this section of Lightroom, you’re attempting to target certain hues in your image. Example, if you’d like to give the reds in your image a little more saturation, you’d use the red saturation in the HSL panel. But what if you only wanted to touch the red shirt in the image, not the red sign? Now you can make these adjustments on a more selective level with the adjustment brush.

Lightroom, not Lightroom Classic, has been updated to give you more interactive tutorials, watermarking and versioning capabilities. Learn more about the updates here on the Adobe blog.

Premiere Pro, Rush, AE

On the video side of things there are some performance updates for Premiere Pro, After Effects and Rush, but two things really stood out to me. That’s the Adobe Stock integration. Yes, Adobe Stock has been available for Premiere Pro and After Effects for motion graphics templates, but now there’s an AUDIO option.

Now, if you’re working on a video and would like some royalty-free music, you can license the audio just as you would with any other asset from Adobe Stock. Just with a click or two. This is now available as Adobe has partnered with epidemic sound and Jamendo to provide high quality, royalty-free audio to Creative Cloud creators.

Another Premiere Pro update is the ability to see if a scene has been edited by using AI. I don’t quite understand this, but Adobe says:

“In Premiere Pro will leverage Adobe Sensei to analyze exported or archived video files and identify edits with pinpoint accuracy. Unlike existing histogram-based solutions, the new technology in Premiere Pro was built with machine learning, helping users to save time by delivering consistently reliable results. Scene Edit Detection will automatically add cuts or markers at each edit point, turning rendered files into editable timelines and enabling per-clip adjustments, such as color correction or reframing”

Rush’s update includes a performance boost for the auto-reframe feature which helps keep your subject in frame when you’re producing content for platforms like IGTV or TikTok which utilizes portrait mode video. This is also available in Premiere Pro. After Effects gets a nice update with Roto Scope 2. This is a tool commonly used for masking out subjects in video footage for cool composite and visual effects. More information about the video suite of updates can be found here on Adobe’s blog.

All of these updates sound pretty good. I hope it all works out for you and your workflow. Let me know how your update goes for you. I look forward to the Photoshop updates, for sure. Especially on iPad. I just wish raw files were supported like they are on Affinity Photo for the iPad.More about all of the updates and Adobe’s approach can be found here on its blog post.