Apple Creator Studio is more of a collection of apps than a single offering. It bundles its biggest video, audio and photo editing apps into one monthly or yearly subscription to keep all the tools at your disposal.
There have always been both pro and ateur solutions for artwork. For video, iMovie offers a free solution while Final Cut Pro caters to the professional, and for audio, GarageBand is the consumer choice while Logic Pro is more advanced. For many users, the free options are more than enough, as editing is now built into the Photos app and the Keynote, Pages and Numbers office provides your presentation, word processing and spreadsheet options.
(Image credit: Apple)
The subscription is designed for both Mac and iPad use, with all apps available for both platforms. Included are three Mac-only apps: Motion allows you to produce animations, Compressor offers options for exporting your videos, and Main Stage is designed for live music performances.
With such a broad offering, it’s no surprise that it’s drawn comparisons to Adobe’s Creative Suite. This also offers video, audio and photo editing, as well as web and design tools in a more à la carte manner. Premiere, Audition and Photoshop are very similar to Apple’s offerings, although aside from Acrobat, Adobe doesn’t include office products in the same way.
I spent a week trying out the new features on iPad and Mac to see how it works. These were the five features that really stood out.
(Image credit: Future)
1. Beat detection in Final Cut Pro
Whatever video you’re creating, music can really add to the effect, and a good editor always takes music into consideration when cutting clips. When a scene changes to a beat, or you get a quick sequence of clips like that beat, it really elevates the video. What Final Cut Pro now offers is a way to simplify this process.
This is not a completely automated process, as you might expect, but it does take the hard work out of planning. With your clips in the timeline and the track below them, the beat detection option analyzes the track and places markers on the beat timeline. You can then very quickly adjust the length of your clips, or cut longer clips, to open these bit markers. The result is very effective.
(Image credit: Future)
2. Players in a productive session in Logic Pro
There are some new tools in this version of Logic Pro, including the ability to import video to create your own song, which is pretty cool. However, my favorite feature here remains the productive session players, introduced in version 11 last year.
It all starts with a vocal track, which Logic Pro can generate from your first recording – whether it’s a guitar, piano or other instrument track. You can then fine-tune the soundtrack if needed to make sure it matches your purpose. Then by adding a new track, you can introduce a session player, in the form of a drummer, bassist or piano player. This will follow your singing structure, tempo and time signature to create the right notes to play.
It’s the fastest way to create a full single-track recording, and lets you get a professional finish in minutes.
(Image credit: Future)
3. Mockup in Pixelmator Pro
Pixelmator Pro is very different from straight image editors, as it feels like a publishing tool. Yes, there are all the photo editing capabilities, but its strength lies in creating pieces that are ready for print, online or presentation.
Because of this, Pixelmator makes it really fast to create posters and social media posts, thanks to the included templates. One of the most interesting options, is what it calls humor. This is an easy way to display your created image or graphic in a product listing.
The layers are already set so that, once you’ve selected your fake image, you can simply layer your creation with one click, then adjust the size to get the look you want. Humor includes t-shirts and bags, device screens, bottles, mugs and other product packaging, book covers, magazine covers and more.
(Image credit: Future)
4. Improved slideshow creation in Keynote
Another major improvement to the versions of Pages, Numbers and Key Text in Creators Studio Premium templates. Not only does this look great, but it also comes with the option to generate your own slides using what they call Smart Content Creation.
This allows you to add a topic and key points to the presentation, such as lecture notes. It then uses AI to condense these into a number of slides and overlay them on you. You still need to log in and edit, and add images, but it’s a quick way to get started.
(Image credit: Future)
5. Content hub for pages
Another feature shared across Pages, Keynote and Spreadsheets is the new Content Hub. This gives you access to free stock images, which can be used in your presentation, report, newsletter or anything you create. There are terms for image use of course. You may not use company logos or trademarked materials, or use them on their own, without permission. However, they are still valid for commercial use in anything you create – so you can use the image as part of a book cover.
(Image credit: Apple)
Should I buy it?
Creators Studio is available now in the App Store for iPad and Mac, priced at £12.99 / $12.99 per month or £129 / $129 per year. Considering the price of Adobe’s offerings and the individual prices of the apps included here, this is excellent value for money. It’s also nice to see that you can still buy individual apps if you want one of them.
Creating separate premium versions of Pages, Numbers and Keynote sounds awkward, however. This feels like a different offering to the main editing apps here (Logic Pro, Final Cut Pro and Pixelmator Pro). It’s a shame if the free versions of these don’t at least benefit from AI generation tools.
There’s also a lack of a dedicated photo app here. Although Pixelmator Pro is capable of editing, it requires the equivalent of Adobe Lightroom for a professional photographer. Apple used to offer Aperture, which was a great photo tool, and the Photomator tool was a popular spot. It would be nice to see Photomator Pro added to this package in the future.
