Faster masks, film grain special effects and refreshed captions dot the list of updates to Adobe’s most advanced video editor.

Adobe released the latest edition of Premiere, updating the popular video editor with a handful of new tools that the company says are “built around how editors actually work.”

The June 2026 update adds new features and minor tweaks across the popular video editor, while Adobe’s After Effects also gains a handful of new features.

Adobe Premiere's summer update brings a handful of new tools without dramatically changing the way that editors work inside the software's beloved workspace, starting with the option to build in natural textures from the timeline.

A new Noise FX tool enables creators to add a film-like grain to footage. Located inside the Effect Controls panel, the tool can dial in grain with an intensity slider, along with functions for working the effect into the shadows, midtones and highlights.

Also in the Effect Controls panel, editors can now work with gradients, including a list of tools to feather, mirror, repeat and make other adjustments. Channel Blur is another new effect arriving in the update.

Video editors also now have the option to use single-word captioning, which shows one word at a time. Like the other June updates, the new captions are designed to fit in with existing tools and arrive by selecting the Single Word layout in the existing caption process.

Adobe says that Object Masks have been refined to improve both speed and accuracy. Masks can also now be regenerated without starting over if the connection to the media is lost.

The update also introduces some new panels and tools. Stock can now be licensed without leaving Premiere inside the new Stock Panel Checkout. Meanwhile, Adobe says the new Sequence Index Panel is designed for long-form editing with more controls.

A new A/V Display Mode will show the video and audio waveforms both in the Source Monitor for easier navigation. Meanwhile, video editors can mute all the existing clips with a press of the global audio mute button.

Markers – Premiere’s way to flag a certain part of the video for easy recall – are also now searchable by color and name.

Adobe also added a 3D Spinback and Slide option into the transition options.

The new Premiere tools come alongside a refresh to After Effects, which adds four AI-powered selection tools to replace the Roto Brush. A new list of tools also come to 3D effect editors, while imported SVG files are now editable inside After Effects.

The updates are rolling out now.

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Adobe Premiere has just introduced a “landmark” color-grading feature, “built from the ground up” and designed to make color grading more accessible for the average content creator. In Adobe’s briefing for its all-new Color Mode, Senior Product Marketing Manager for Video at Adobe, Jason Druss, called existing color-grading tools “very, very mathematical, scientific systems that were designed for full-time specialists.”

And indeed, color grading is an area that Adobe has arguably failed to fully harness in the past. Despite Premiere’s position as industry-grade video software that’s been used to edit the likes of Deadpool (2016), Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve is arguably the Hollywood go-to for color grading.

But Color Mode (now in beta) could be about to change the way creators think about color grading. The technology is said to be the first-of-its-kind and built entirely from the ground up. Jason explained that Adobe isn’t calling Color Mode a feature, panel or iterative update; it’s being referred to as “a complete reset for what color can be for video editors.”

During the demonstration, the ‘Color’ tab was dominated by a huge program monitor, with additional clips positioned in a vertical strip. At the bottom of the interface are the color controls; there are no hidden tabs or drop-downs. All of the color tools are visible from the get-go.

The tools aren’t just simple sliders either, but bi-directional circles. In the case of the contrast tool, up and down alter the contrast of the footage, while left and right control the pivot range. Upon clicking on the tool, a heads-up display appears, conveying video scopes, numerical information, and real-time animated overlays. Each ‘HUD’ is customizable, too, so you can alter elements such as the size and positioning to your taste.

The demo also demonstrated Operations, which Jason called “a completely new invented paradigm for grading, copying and moving color work throughout your timeline.” He proceeded to bring up a selection of Style Presets, making it clear that they differ from LUTs in that they’re essentially pre-graded presets that can be applied and tweaked further by the user.

There’s even a Film Color Module, with 90 film presets such as Fuji ETERNA 250 and Kodak SFX that can be directly applied to the footage. You can also group clips of footage together so you can quickly grade bundles of footage independently from one another.

Another Color Mode innovation is that it will intelligently identify the main colors within a piece of footage so you can edit that hue locally. The demo also combined the AI Object Mask with Color Mode by using the mask to pick out and track a moving vehicle and then color grade the object locally.

Ultimately, Adobe isn’t framing Color Mode as an incremental update. Jason called it “application-sized” and the “largest release in Premiere history.” Whether or not it’s going to compete with DaVinci Resolve remains to be seen, but it’s exciting to see Adobe attempting to innovate an area of video and, indeed, stills editing that's undeniably daunting for newcomers and seasoned editors alike.

The big Premiere news launches alongside some color-grading news for Adobe’s generative-AI editor, Firefly. Simple color adjustments will now be available in the software’s video editor, allowing users to tweak a range of tonal adjustments, including exposure, saturation, and color temperature.

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The big surprise following Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve 21 announcement was that the free-to-use video editor now supports photo editing. That’s right, stills photographers can access the coveted software’s color grading tools, favored by Hollywood productions. But of course, that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, with a whole roster of video-centric upgrades to boot.

Unsurprisingly, AI-powered tools feature heavily in this year’s update, with none perhaps as bold as AI Face Age Transformer and AI Face Reshaper. The former allows you to “de-age” faces, while the latter allows you to reshape them. It wasn’t all that long ago (circa 2016) that Robert Downey Jr and Johnny Depp were de-aged in Captain America: Civil War and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, respectively, which certainly puts this tech into perspective.

AI Blemish Removal rounds off the face-tweaking tools, but they’re not the only AI additions. AI IntelliSearch allows creators to “instantly” find the content they’re looking for, with the intelligent search tool allowing you to find people, objects, and even key words in dialogue. AI CineFocus is a particularly interesting addition, with the ability to alter the perceived depth of field of a scene, going so far as to add bokeh and simulate rack focusing.

AI Speech Generator generates voiceover from text and can even replicate your own voice with just a 10-second sample, while AI SlateID can automatically add metadata that it extracts from a clapperboard used in footage. The final two AI-powered tool additions are AI UltraSharpen and AI Motion Deblur, used to sharpen footage and remove motion-blur artifacts, respectively.

And that’s not all. DaVinci Resolve’s visual effects page, Fusion, gets over 70 new graphics via the new Krokodove toolset. Fusion also links with Fairlight’s audio engine (Resolve’s integrated audio post-production software), which allows for automatic animation based on audio analysis for audio-driven animation (a boon for music video or social media editors). Fairlight also gets folders to collapse or expand audio tracks in a boost to track management.

DaVinci Resolve 21 also boasts big virtual reality updates, with Fusion adding spherical Panomap rotation said to provide more intuitive pitch, tilt, pan, yaw and roll, alongside ILPD retargeting data “for more advanced stereoscopic media handling and compositing.” In addition, Foveated rendering, designed to mimic the human eye’s rendering to reduce GPU processing will now be supported for Apple Immersive workflows. Meta Quest and YouTube presets will also be supported.

Another major workflow update is native support for OGraf HTML graphics and Lottie animations, allowing for files to be dragged directly into the media pool, treated like fully-rendered animations – alpha channels recognized.

Keyframing has also been treated to a few updates, including new ease animations, simultaneous adjustments to multiple clips, as well as a four-point Bézier curve. Another key update is MultiMaster trim passes. This allows you to produce multiple HDR and SDR trim deliverables from one timeline, without having to keep duplicating the timelines.

The news has dropped just days before content professionals descend on Las Vegas for the annual NAB Show. And if you’re lucky enough to be visiting ‘Sin City’, DaVinci Resolve 21 will be demonstrated at the Blackmagic Design booth (#N2502). If you can’t make NAB, you can download the DaVinci Resolve 21 public beta and try it out for yourself now.

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OneOdie is best-known as a headphone manufacturer, producing options at a range of price points for DJs, gamers, and studio monitoring. But with the OneOdio solocaster, the Chinese audio company has created an all-in-one audio interface and podcast console aimed at streamers, podcasters and content creators.

The idea behind the solocaster is to provide users with the ability to capture professional-sounding audio with a simple and easy-to-use hardware interface. This snazzy little unit is fairly compact, so it doesn’t take up much desk space.

The device combines a sound card, voice transformer and mixer in a single compact unit, supporting multi-source input mixing and loopback audio for recording PC audio alongside your microphone. It has pretty much everything you could need for recording audio, not to mention it has a few neat little tricks up its sleeve.

It includes four FX pads, three fader controls, and six built-in voice effects for real-time vocal manipulation. A live noise filter and auto-ducking keep your voice clear over background sound, while 11 RGB lighting modes look great.

OneOdio solocaster: Specifications

OneOdio solocaster: Price

The OneOdio solocaster was launched on February 3 2026, and was immediately available on the OneOdio Website and Amazon in the US and UK. The device costs just $49.99 / £49.99, which is a fantastic price considering all of the features.

Just to put this into perspective, I own a Behringer U-Phoria UM2 for use as an external soundcard I can plug XLR mics into for sound recording, and this costs just over half as much. The thing is, the Behringer is incredibly basic in comparison, with only the most basic features available.

This makes the solocaster a much better option in my opinion, but only if you do need features beyond an external soundcard/audio interface.

OneOdio solocaster: Design & Handling

The Solocast is well made, but there’s no getting away from the fact that it’s plasticky and lightweight. For a device where you’re turning knobs, hitting buttons and moving mixer sliders, a little weight beyond 12.03oz / 350g would make it feel more solid. However, the four wide rubber feet on the bottom do successfully keep the solocaster in place.

It’s also a pleasingly compact device at 6.7x5.4x1.5in (2.1 inches with knobs) / 17.0x13.8x3.7cm (5.4cm with the knobs), so it doesn’t take up too much desk space.

On top of the solocaster is where all the controls are, and these include illuminated buttons offering various functions, including four FX pads that can record for up to 30 seconds, so you can use them to apply a wide range of sound effects, voice or even music.

The buttons are a good size for use, while the knobs and sliders provide further sound control. The latter are smooth in operation, and although the buttons do work well, they do make a slight clicking noise when pressed, despite being made of rubber.

These and the knobs feature integrated LED strips with 11 dynamic RGB lighting modes, including solid colours, gradients and animated rainbow effects. The latter does look great to be fair, even if they’re ultimately pointless.

Connectivity is reasonably good but could be even better. The solocaster supports five independent audio channels across USB-C, 3.5mm, XLR, Bluetooth and AUX, making it a true all-in-one hub for managing microphones, system audio, background music and external sources simultaneously. What I would have liked to have seen would be two XLR inputs to allow for two microphones to be used for podcasting.

OneOdio solocaster: Performance

In all honesty, the OneOdio Solocaster does everything it claims to and does it well. The sound quality is great, and once you’ve had a little play for a few minutes, everything is incredibly easy to use. There are no drivers to install either – it's plug-and-play.

Sound mixing is handled through three dedicated faders for real-time level adjustment, although one is for the headphones, so it’s not going to affect the recorded sound. It’s probably fairer to say there are two sliders for sound mixing.

At the heart of the OneOdio Solocaster is a professional-grade preamp with 48V phantom power. This allows you to use professional XLR microphones and deliver broadcast-standard sound with just this simple soundcard doing all the work for you.

Live noise filtering and auto ducking keep voices clean during gameplay or commentary, with background noise reduction, while direct monitoring and one-touch mute give creators additional control and confidence during live and recorded sessions. Live monitoring is an essential feature and one that all similar sound cards offer.

There are six real-time voice modulation modes – female, male, child, elder, creature and robotic. I’m not sure that they’re successful in terms of matching the voice types since they all sound like creatures of some kind, but they work exceptionally well and inject a little fun into the recording when required.

Then four programmable FX pads allow custom sound clips, audio tags or effects to be triggered instantly. These also work well, and I played around using the voice modulations to record phrases that could be played back at the press of a button. You can also connect your phone via Bluetooth to add music or use the line-in to play music from your computer.

OneOdio solocaster: Verdict

The OneOdio solocaster is a highly capable audio interface that offers many more features than you’d expect at the price point. Audio quality is good, and even the voice modulations work exceptionally well despite not necessarily being true to their descriptions, while the FX buttons worked exceptionally well.

The clue is in the name, but my main issue with the solocaster is that it only has one XLR input. Two would be useful, so two microphones could be used at once when podcasting. The headphone slider on the device could have been used instead for the second mic.

Rumor has it LG may discontinue production of 8K LCD and OLED displays, citing a lack of demand for 8K televisions (although it hasn't ruled out producing them again if demand increases). And LG isn't the only television manufacturer to roll back on 8K. Apparently TCL announced in 2023 that it was no longer developing 8K televisions, also due to falling demand. Sony also continued this retrograde trend in 2025 when it too ceased production of 8K TVs.

This isn't the first time we've seen a backwards step in television tech. 3D-capable TVs were touted as the next big thing in 2010, but by 2017 3D TV's were all but extinct. Luke-warm consumer demand and a lack of 3D content were often cited as contributory factors to 3D TV's demise, and wouldn't you know, these reasons can also be attributed to 8K's decline.

But with 8K cameras being readily available since around 2020 when the Canon EOS R5 was launched, how can there still be a relative shortage of 8K content? One factor is likely the supporting hardware required for producing 8K footage. Ultra-fast, high-capacity memory cards are a must for smooth 8K recording, and hugely powerful computers will be required for 8K editing.

The issue of whether anyone truly needs an 8K camera is discussed in Digital Camera World's weekly podcast, Bokeh Face, available to view here:

Then there's the small matter of previewing 8K content. Back in 2017 Dell launched the first consumer 8K monitor, the 32-inch UltraSharp UP3218K. Since then it has been discontinued and almost no other 8K monitors have been launched. Right now there's only a single 8K 16:9 monitor available to buy at B&H, and it'll cost you a whopping $8,799.

As a viewer of 8K content, you're also going to need a considerably faster internet connection to stream 8K video smoothly, as with 4x as many pixels as 4K, the bit rate of an 8K video stream will be significantly higher and more bandwidth-intensive.

However, there's another, more fundamental reason why I think 8K television is following the same path as 3D TV: it simply isn't necessary. For the last 25 years or so, the world of digital video has been obsessed with increasing resolution. 'HD' (1280 x 720 pixels) and 'Full HD' (1920 x 1080) were the resolutions of choice from the early-mid 2000s, and a decade later 4K (3840 x 2160, or 4x the number of pixels in Full HD) became the resolution we had to have. But as with many technological advancements, we're now at a stage where subsequent improvements yield diminishing returns. While the jump from Full HD to 4K gave a modest tangible improvement to image quality, the difference between 4K and 8K is almost imperceptible in most cases.

Logically this shouldn't be the case though. 8K has 4x as many pixels per video frame as 4K, so it should look 4x sharper, right? Wrong. There's one constant here that hasn't been considered, and which can't change: the resolving power of the human eye. Just because your shiny new 8K TV packs 4x the number of pixels as your old 4K panel of the same size doesn't mean your eyes can actually see that extra detail when viewed from the same distance as before. Boffins have calculated the exact resolving power of a lens like the human eye using the Reyleigh formula, and we can use this to calculate how close you'd need to view your television in order to actually see the extra resolution of 8K.

In the case of a 75" television, you'd need to be viewing from as close as 2.5 feet (79cm) to really perceive the 8K difference. You'll see a small benefit over 4K when sitting between 2.5 feet and 4.9 feet away, but step back more than 4.9 feet from your 75" TV and you'll see no difference between 4K and 8K. Given that even Panasonic recommends a viewing distance of 6-9 feet for its 70" 4K TVs, and Samsung suggests a 7.5-foot viewing distance from a 75" television, getting closer than 4.9 feet is unrealistic for most people.

For more information on this, check out this excellent article on the subject from Forbes.

So with this in mind, even if you ignore the production difficulties with recording, editing and transmitting 8K video, there simply isn't a compelling reason for actually viewing 8K content in the home. We've reached a point in video resolution where going beyond 4K is ultimately pointless for the vast, vast majority of consumers. Now it looks as though television manufacturers have woken up to this.

What better time for Adobe to announce that 85% of Sundance filmmakers use Adobe Creative Cloud tools, as well as major new updates to Premiere and After Effects, than the week of the Sundance Film Festival? That’s right, the bastion of independent filmmaking kicks off on Thursday, and Adobe is a recurring theme in the filmmakers’ productions.

The broad strokes of the creative software behemoth’s updates are designed to make post-production faster and more intuitive by way of, you guessed it, artificial intelligence. At the front of the pack is Premiere’s new AI-powered Object Mask, which would make Photoshop’s Magic Wand tool blush. This feature was in public beta, but is now available for all Premiere users.

With the tool selected, you simply hover over the scene in question, and colored overlays instantly highlight individual objects and people. What’s more impressive is that a selected mask will then track a moving subject. Perfection isn’t always guaranteed, of course, so you can still use fast lasso and rectangular editing tools to refine your selection. However, anyone who’s ever spent time rotoscoping will know that this is a tool with the potential to dramatically speed up workflow.

Adobe has also redesigned Premiere’s Shape Masks, with Ellipse, Rectangle, and Pen all allowing you to work with effects such as blur and relighting, while Adobe rates these tools’ tracking at 20x faster than previous versions of the software. They can be added via the toolbar, resized, moved, rotated, and feathered, while Adobe says that it’s redesigned Bezier curves for smoother customization. Crucially, you can mix multiple masks with different blending modes.

And indeed, during a demo, I got to see Adobe’s Jason Druss using Shape Masks and Object Masks in tandem to quickly color grade the sky, while removing the faces of two subjects that encroached on the original mask. When cutting out a fanny pack and animating it with a new motion-camera transition to fly towards the screen, he said: “As the fanny pack, not only comes out, but we can see the motion blur attached to it (...) if you want to accomplish work like this, you need to be a really, really advanced video editor.”

That’s not all, you can track bi-directionally and anchor masks to any object within the frame. Adobe says it has also implemented live tracking previews, as per community feedback. But what happens when you make manual adjustments? Well, a new Frame track-editing mode is designed to mitigate the need to manually adjust each keyframe, with the software taking adjustments and applying them accordingly.

Firefly Boards and Premiere have been brought closer together, too, with the ability to import multiple assets into Premiere with a single click. Similarly, the new Adobe Stock integration allows users to browse, preview, license, and import over 52 million clips within Premiere itself. Frame.io will also enjoy greater integration with Premiere, thanks to the presence of the new V4 panel (currently in beta).

Adobe After Effects 26.0

Adobe After Effects has also benefited from a raft of updates. Native 3D Parametric Meshes looks like a great addition for newcomers, while speeding up the workflow of seasoned creators. They allow you to create and combine a plethora of shapes, with new Spot and Parallel shadows said to boost the realism of a scene.

Adobe says that over 1,300 Free Substance 3D Materials can be applied to both native and imported meshes. I got to see materials applied to meshes in real-time during a demo with Adobe’s Victoria Nece, and as somebody with no 3D-modeling experience, the simplicity of this looked very appealing. So too did After Effects’ new Variable Fonts, with the ability to animate typography using keyframes, expressions, and up to eight axes per layer.

Finally, After Effects benefits from an enhanced vector workflow, with the ability to import SVG files directly into the software (commonly used in Adobe Illustrator). On the subject of Illustrator, gradients and transparency settings are preserved when converting Illustrator layers into shape layers.

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Final Cut Pro users will soon be able to choose between a one-time purchase or a subscription model – but tucked in with the news of Apple’s new Creator Studio subscription is a list of new tools coming to the popular video editor. That list includes new AI-powered search, beat detection and a Montage Maker.

The update, which will likely arrive on January 28 with Apple Creator Studio, adds two new forms of AI-powered search to the video editor.

First, Transcript Search will enable creators to quickly find the right soundbite – a tool likely built on the previous launch of AI-powered automatic captions. Apple says the tool can sort through hours of footage with a simple text search, and that it’s geared for interviews and video podcasts.

Second, users will also be able to search through the video footage itself with Visual Search.

The ability to search through my Camera Roll on my iPhone for a specific object, without manually tagging photos, is one of my favorite Apple Intelligence features – and I suspect the tool will be similarly handy for video editing.

Another new AI-based update, dubbed Beat Detection, finds the beats in a music track and visualizes them in the timeline. The feature is designed to aid editors in timing visuals with the beat of the music.

Finally, Final Cut Pro is gaining a tool to automatically create a quick montage from footage using AI. Montage Maker, Apple says, finds the “best visual moments within the footage” and creates a montage from that.

Creators are able to adjust the pacing, cut the visuals to music and use the intelligent Auto Crop to reframe for vertical and horizontal projects.

Apple Creator Studio is launching on January 28 though, unlike Adobe’s transition to a subscription, Apple says one-time purchases will remain available. The tech giant, however, notes that some “access to some of the premium content is available only to Apple Creator Studio subscribers.”

When I read that DaVinci Resolve now supports 32K video editing, I genuinely wondered if I'd fallen and landed on my head. 

Because let's get real: we're talking about a picture that's 32,000 pixels across. Over half a billion pixels per frame. This, in an industry still wrestling with 4K delivery, where 8K remains a curiosity reserved for tech demos and the occasional wildlife documentary.

Despite all that, though, Blackmagic Design has unlocked 32K editing in the free version of DaVinci Resolve 20.3 for anyone with an M5-powered Mac. That's 30,720 × 17,280 pixels. Sixteen times the resolution of 8K. Two hundred and fifty-six times the resolution of 4K. 

So I'm still rubbing my temple and checking whether there's a lump there. These numbers are absurd. The question is whether they're usefully absurd.

Reality check

After all, we're living in a world where 4K is only just becoming standard. Most streaming services still default to 1080p unless you've got the bandwidth and the subscription tier to prove otherwise. Netflix is still optimizing how to get 4K HDR into homes without constant buffering. 

Meanwhile, 8K adoption has been glacial. Less than 3% of televisions support it. Content is sparse. The entire industry spent years being told 8K was the future, and the future hasn't bothered to show up.

So who needs 32K? Is this genuinely useful, or is it just Blackmagic flexing? The answer, I'd argue, is somewhere in between.

Niche uses

LED volumes are the obvious use case – those massive wraparound screens used on shows like The Mandalorian aren't constrained by broadcast standards. They're custom installations where resolution directly impacts how believable the virtual environment looks to the camera. The same goes for projection domes, large-format digital signage, and certain high-end VFX workflows.

If you're shooting on something like the Blackmagic URSA Cine 17K camera, you need software that can actually handle that footage without choking. Editing in 32K will presumably give you the headroom to work comfortably.

Then there's Apple's immersive video format for Vision Pro, which shoots in 180-degree 8K 3D at 90fps. As spatial computing develops (assuming it actually does) these resolution demands will start to make more sense. Though we're still talking about extremely niche territory.

To my mind, then, the strongest case for working in 32K isn't about what you're delivering today; it's about what you might need tomorrow.

Film studios have been scanning 35mm prints at 8K; not because anyone's watching in 8K now, but because they're future-proofing their archives. When you finish a project at 32K, you create a master that can be downscaled to 8K, 4K or 1080p with exceptional quality. In 10 years, if 8K becomes standard, you won't need to return to the original camera files. The work is done.

Verdict

Overall then, I think the very fact that Blackmagic has made 32K editing available to anyone with an M5 MacBook matters. Not because everyone's going to suddenly start shooting 32K; that would be madness. But because when specific workflows demand it – a museum installation, a high-end retail display, volumetric capture prep, key archiving – the tools will be there.

For the majority of working photographers and filmmakers, 32K capability is irrelevant right now. Your clients aren't asking for it. The infrastructure isn't there. And most strikingly, the storage requirements are punishing. A single minute of uncompressed 32K footage at 24fps would eat roughly 270GB. 

Right now, figures like that sound totally insane. Remember, though, that five years ago, 8K editing would have seemed ridiculous. Now it's a legitimate acquisition format, even if delivery remains predominantly 4K. 

So I guess the real question isn't whether you need 32K today. It's how long it'll be before we stop asking the question altogether?

In September, Adobe squished the popular video editing Premiere Pro down to smartphone size – and just a few weeks later, that free app is getting tools tailored for YouTube Shorts. On Monday, December 08, Adobe announced a partnership with YouTube that brings a dedicated YouTube Shorts space in the free video editing app on iOS.

The new YouTube Shorts space gives creators tools geared to YouTube’s platform for short-form vertical videos, including sharing directly to YouTube Shorts from the Premiere mobile app in a few taps.

The new space tailored to Shorts also includes access to exclusive effects along with transitions and title presets, Adobe says. The Shorts-dedicated workspace also includes pre-made templates for quickly creating videos.

But the update also allows Premiere mobile users to customize their own templates, including sharing them with the wider Shorts community for reuse in hopes of sparking a new trend.

While the YouTube Shorts dedicated workspace is new in the young mobile app, Adobe notes that creators can still use standard Premiere mobile tools to create short-form videos, including the multitrack timeline.

Adobe re-imagined the popular desktop video editor in September when it launched Premiere mobile on iOS. The app is free to download from the App Store, through limits some features to paid users, including generative credits and cloud storage. While the app launched on iPhones first, the company said an Android version is in the works.

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When Fujifilm announced the GFX Externa 55 cinema camera, it did so with a promise: 3D-LUTs for Fujifilm’s iconic color profiles would be coming. Now, the files are official: 3D LUTs for several classic color profiles are available as a free download.

3D LUTs, or Look Up Tables, are essentially like a color map that tells both cameras and software how to map the colors in a video. Fujifilm’s cameras can already apply their color profiles to videos in-camera, but those effects don’t impact raw footage files like F-Log2.

The launch effectively allows videographers and filmmakers to do what photographers using Fujifilm cameras have been able to do in Lightroom and similar photo editors for years: Apply Fujifilm’s Film Simulation to jump-start the editing process.

The newly released files are designed to be used with footage from the new Fujifilm GFX Eterna 55 and include longstanding color profiles like Provia, Velvia, Astia, Classic Chrome, Reala Ace, Pro Neg. Hi, Pro Neg. Standard, Classic Neg. Nostalgic Neg. and Acros.

Fujifilm has a long list of 3D-LUT files for its cameras, but most of these appear to be limited to Eterna, even for newer cameras like the Fujifilm X-E5. The launch of the files for the Eterna 55 brings more film simulation possibilities than the files tied to its earlier cameras.

That, however, begs the question – can the 3D-LUT files be used on other Fujifilm cameras? When LUT files are designed for a specific camera, using them on another camera may not look entirely as intended, as the input on the sensor is different. Some users, however, are reporting success in using the LUTs on other Fujifilm cameras.

As a Fujifilm photographer, I have Lightroom set up to automatically apply the film simulation from my Fujifilm camera to RAW photos at import, then edit from there. Access to the 3D LUT files brings this sort of editing jump-start to filmmaking – a very welcome addition if Fujifilm plans to continue pushing into cinema with cameras like the Eterna 55.

The 3D LUTs for Fujifilm cameras are available directly from Fujifilm.

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Cameras, photography and printing go hand in hand with making motion pictures, and none more so for legendary Stanley Kubrick, famous for his meticulous attention to detail when it came to creating his brilliant movies. From A Clockwork Orange (1971), The Shining (1980), Full Metal Jacket (1987), and his final film, Eyes Wide Shut (1999), the stories of his fanatical ways of working are the stuff of legend.

On a Bill Simmons Podcast that’s recently resurfaced, Matt Damon tells this amazing story about The Shining production designer Roy Walker, and Stanley Kubrick’s obsessive, time-consuming and controlling methods to make the perfect film back in 1978-1979. Kubrick used his film camera and 8x10in prints of a model set to perfect the lighting for his full-scale set when shooting the movie, as Damon explains…

“I worked with the production designer on the set of The Talented Mr Ripley and he was Kubrick’s guy, and he told me this great story about when he was designing that movie. Stanley Kubrick had a scale model of the Overlook Hotel in their production office, and he would set these miniature lights, and he would take hours doing this while his production heads were standing around. Then he'd take a photograph and then he'd hand it to an assistant who would go and run off (this is before one-hour photos) and develop it, and come back with an 8x10in print.”

Above: see the whole interview with Matt Damon. The section on The Shining starts at 02:57

Damon continues: “Kubrick would look at it for about five minutes and then he'd go back and he'd start adjusting the model lights again. This process would go on for days, but what Roy said what was incredible was when you were on The Shining film set, Kubrick had come up with some algorithm by which he could transpose the numbers of the (miniature) lights, he would set them just how he wanted, and then he would record what each light was at for exactly the same place in the big world.”

Then with his clever algorithm, Kubrick could go and set the lights up perfectly on the main Overlook Hotel film set.

“Roy said you could hold the 8x10in print in front of your face on set, and pull it away and you would see the exact same thing as shot on the miniature model… the level of artistry/insanity and obsession is just so beautiful,” says Damon.

It’s mind-blowing to think how time-consuming and costly this process was for Kubrick during production of The Shining way back in 1978-79.

In 2025, this process would obviously be far easier and quicker – now we can take a photo and print it almost instantly using a portable printer. Or we can simply use an Apple iPad to control our camera to shoot and review images on screen at around the same as 9x7in prints.

Just weeks after Adobe announced that Premiere was coming to iPhone (Android software is in development) it’s finally here – and better yet, it’s free! That’s right, unless you require additional storage and / or generative AI credits, the Adobe Premiere mobile app is absolutely free to use.

The software, which supersedes the existing Adobe Premiere Rush, is designed to edit professional-grade video on the go, from short films and client work to YouTube and TikTok videos. And while it might not have the full functionality of Adobe Premiere Pro for desktop, users can create a rough edit in the app before continuing that edit using the full-fat desktop software (currently in beta).

That’s not to say that you can’t edit, export and share entirely within the app, though. The iPhone software boasts a multi-track timeline, the ability to “produce studio-quality” audio, form AI-generated content, while also providing access to millions of free multimedia assets.

As Adobe’s VP of product marketing, Mike Polner, put it: “We’re excited to bring the power of Premiere to creators’ fingertips, delivering pro-level creative control, without the pro-level complexity”.

I attended an online briefing, where Adobe senior experience designer lead, Dave Werner, performed a live demo. He said: “It feels right at home from using Premiere on the Desktop (...) all the major features and precision and control that I need, I’m finding in the app.”

During the demo, I got to see Dave put together a quick family short – and the first thing I noticed was the multi-track timeline. I’m an Adobe Rush user, but I’ve often found the timeline to be frustrating. My first impression of the Adobe Premiere mobile app timeline is that it’s much more intuitive and precise, with the ability to trim clips with frame-by-frame precision.

He also demonstrated a couple of AI-powered features. Perhaps the most useful being Enhance Speech. Dave’s example was a video clip taken on a cruise ship, where he’s speaking to the camera, but crowds of noisy people made the dialogue very difficult to hear. Enhance Speech severely reduced the background noise and made the dialogue much clearer.

Another interesting AI-audio tool is Generative Sound Effects. This enables the user to record a vocal passage, and along with a prompt, the AI software uses the timing and cadence of the recording as a blueprint in which to generate the desired sound effect.

In the demo, a ringing bell sound was created by literally speaking into the microphone, “ring-a-ring-a-ring,” then inputting the prompt “Ringing and clanging a bell”, before the software generated a selection of different bell sounds to choose from.

The final generative AI tool I got to see in action was Expand Image. Here the software expanded a 4:5 video clip to 16:9, with the generative AI seamlessly filling in the gaps. And of course, that’s not all the software is capable of, with 4K HDR editing, animated captions, instant background removal, motion effects and more. You can even generate AI-powered stickers to spice up your shorts.

Adobe quoted several content creators during its presentation, with Temi Coker stating: “I can shoot and edit anywhere. [The app] gives me the freedom to just start.” Cleo Abram added: “Premiere on iPhone feels like having a production studio in my pocket.”

Well, Adobe, I’m looking forward to downloading the software – and I’ll be sure to follow up on this article by letting you know how I get on. Until then, the Adobe Premiere mobile app is available on the App Store right now and is free to download. Upgrade plans are available for additional storage or generative AI credits.

According to the Adobe help center, Premiere Rush can no longer be downloaded, with existing downloads working until discontinuation on September 30 2026.

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Last weekend, I wandered into my local cinema with zero expectations and even less information. My wife had invited me to see a film called The Long Walk, which I knew nothing about. What followed was the most visually arresting cinema experience I've had in years.

First, a warning: this is a brutal film. The story revolves around a dystopian competition where young men walk until they drop dead; Stephen King at his most merciless. But what got my pulse racing wasn't the cruelty; it was how astonishingly beautiful every single frame looked.

Let me be clear. Director Francis Lawrence has crafted something here that feels more like a feature-length photography exhibition than a movie.

There's a shot early on where the boys are silhouetted against a massive dam at sunrise, the rushing water creating this otherworldly soundscape while the light catches the exhaustion already creeping across their faces. It's the kind of image that feels like it belongs on a gallery wall, not buried in a multiplex showing between superhero sequels.

The cinematographer Jo Willems, too, deserves a standing ovation. Consider the recurring motif of the endless highway stretching toward the horizon: it should be monotonous, repetitive, boring as hell. Instead, each variation feels like a different artist's interpretation of the same subject.

Sometimes it's bathed in golden hour light that makes the asphalt shimmer like water. At others it's shrouded in pre-dawn mist that transforms the walkers into ghostly figures emerging from nowhere. There's one particular aerial shot, where the line of boys curves along a rural road, that Gregory Crewdson would have been proud of.

Why it's different

But here's what gets me: the film was shot entirely in chronological order. And this isn't just production trivia: it fundamentally affects how the movie looks and feels. You can literally watch these actors physically deteriorate, frame by frame.

As the drama progresses, the camera captures every blister, every moment of genuine exhaustion, every real bond formed between cast members who were actually living through a version of what their characters experienced (minus the bloody deaths, of course).

What Lawrence understood is that the real drama isn't in the dystopian world-building; it's in the faces. The camera becomes obsessively focused on expressions, on the micro-changes that happen when someone realizes they're about to die, on the way exhaustion strips away all pretense.

Can we have more?

All of which makes me wonder how often we'll get to have these big-screen experiences in the future. I'm not naive about cinema's challenges. Streaming has taken away much of the box office, audiences seem content with mediocrity delivered to their living rooms, and the art of cinematography often feels like a lost craft in our CG-dominated landscape.

But then something like The Long Walk comes along and reminds you what cinema can achieve when filmmakers still give a damn about visual storytelling. This isn't just a movie: it's a masterclass in how every frame can carry emotional weight, how beauty and brutality can coexist, and how the camera can become a character in its own right.

Francis Lawrence has created something that transcends its source material and its genre. He's made a horrifying film that's also one of the most beautiful things I've seen. So in an era where so many movies feel disposable, The Long Walk feels essential: not just as entertainment, but as art. I urge you to go see it.

Blackmagic Design has just released a full suite of free training books for DaVinci Resolve 20 – and they’re an absolute gift for anyone learning to edit, color grade, mix sound or build visual effects.

The new step-by-step guides take a project-based approach, walking you through everything from cutting a documentary trailer to colour grading with Resolve’s legendary tools, building soundtracks in Fairlight and compositing in Fusion. There are six books in total, covering editing, audio, color, and visual effects, and each one is available to download right now, free of charge.

As someone who’s transitioned from stills into video, I’ve found Resolve to be one of the most intuitive video editing platforms out there. These new guides delve much deeper, providing both newcomers and experienced editors with a structured way to learn the software’s ever-growing toolkit.

They’re also completely up-to-date for version 20, which recently introduced a host of new features, so even seasoned users will find fresh techniques to explore.

Each book focuses on a different aspect of the workflow. The Beginner’s Guide covers the essentials of editing, audio, and color. The Editor’s Guide moves into advanced cutting and trimming, metadata, and multi-camera workflows.

There are dedicated guides for Fairlight audio and for color grading, including everything from balancing footage to working with nodes and Resolve’s powerful Magic Mask. And for those diving into visual effects, two volumes take you through compositing, green screen work, 3D particles and much more.

For photographers dipping a toe into video, filmmakers who want to explore Resolve’s newer features, or editors ready to sharpen their craft, these books are well worth the download.

I’ll be grabbing them myself, especially the visual effects and audio guides, as those are areas where, coming from stills, I could use a step-by-step guide.

The new DaVinci Resolve 20 training books are available now via Blackmagic’s website.

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Adobe Premiere Pro is as synonymous with video editing as Photoshop is to photo editing – and now the desktop video editing powerhouse is coming to mobile devices. Adobe is bringing its popular video editor to iPhones this fall, with an Android version to follow. The move reimagines the popular desktop software for smaller screens while keeping favorites like the multi-track timeline intact.

On Thursday, September 04, Adobe announced the upcoming launch of Premiere for iPhone. The upcoming app, which opened for pre-orders today, is rebuilt for mobile devices, including cloud-based capabilities that allow creators to edit on the go and share to social media – or finish the project on the longstanding desktop software.

Adobe says that creators familiar with the desktop software will recognize the multi-track timeline that allows editors to layer together different tracks, audio, and special effects. The company says the mobile app still offers trimming and adjusting with precision, despite being geared for a smaller screen.

The mobile Premiere app will also include audio recording for voiceovers, including the desktop software’s Enhance Speech tool to clean up noisy backgrounds. Creators will also be able to choose from audio assets like music, as well as stickers, photos, and fonts to work with.

Generative AI is built into Premiere for iPhone. Creators can generate video to expand a too-short clip using Adobe Firefly. Adobe’s generative sound effect tools are also coming to the app, including a tool that allows users to mix text prompts with their voice in order to time the sound effects with the footage.

Premiere for iPhone will allow creators to automatically resize edits to export for different platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Reels. Or, using cloud connectivity, creators can also continue to work on the project in the desktop app’s larger screen and wider range of tools.

Adobe Premiere Pro is one of the most popular video editing programs on desktop, used on hit films like Deadpool, Gone Girl, and Everything Everywhere All At Once. Adding a mobile version will likely give current users the flexibility to edit on the go, while introducing the longstanding tool to mobile content creators.

Like Photoshop for mobile, the iPhone version of Premiere Pro is a free download. Creators can also edit with the app for free, but features like generative AI and cloud connectivity are paid features.

And also like Photoshop for smartphones, Premiere mobile isn't the first Adobe video editor that works on smartphones. Premiere Rush is a scaled-down version of Premiere Pro designed for streamlined edits with a lower learning curve that works across desktop and mobile.

The iPhone version of Premiere Pro will launch this fall, and Adobe says that an Android version is also in the works. Pre-orders for Premiere Pro have opened in the App Store to give creators first access to the app at launch.

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Blackmagic Design has released a comprehensive new guide for its groundbreaking URSA Cine Immersive Camera, offering what is arguably the most detailed resource yet for filmmakers looking to step into the world of immersive storytelling.

At 156 pages, the free guide covers the entire workflow from camera operation and shooting strategies to post-production and delivery, making it an invaluable resource for creators exploring this emerging format.

Immersive filmmaking remains in its infancy, but with Blackmagic’s commitment to open access resources and clear technical explanations, the barriers to entry are coming down. This new guide follows the company’s tradition of publishing in-depth, no-cost manuals designed not just to explain the 'hows' but also the whys behind their technology.

The URSA Cine Immersive is purpose-built for Apple Immersive Video, a 180-degree stereoscopic format developed for Apple Vision Pro. Unlike traditional cinema or even 360-degree video, immersive filmmaking enables audiences to experience stories in three-dimensional space with a natural field of view, combining the best of cinematic composition with the presence of spatial video.

The Blackmagic guide doesn’t just teach button presses; it contextualizes the format itself, covering everything from exposure strategies at 90 frames per second to managing motion for comfortable viewing, to the nuances of delivery for Apple Vision Pro. For filmmakers, this means fewer unknowns and a smoother path into a format that can otherwise feel intimidating.

At the heart of the system is the URSA Cine Immersive camera, designed specifically for high-resolution stereoscopic capture. It features two matched 58-megapixel RGBW sensors, nearly square in aspect, paired with custom 210-degree fisheye lenses placed 64 millimeters apart to mimic the natural spacing of human vision.

The camera records dual 8K streams at 90 frames per second to match Apple Vision Pro playback, while also supporting alternative frame rates for other applications.

The camera has been designed to simplify what has historically been a very complex pipeline. While immersive filmmaking demands higher light levels, careful shutter management, and new approaches to framing, the combination of the URSA Cine Immersive and Blackmagic’s supporting software ecosystem, including DaVinci Resolve, makes the entire process more approachable than ever before.

What’s more, the new 156-page guide serves as a roadmap for creators, bridging the gap between traditional film practices and the unique considerations of immersive formats. From avoiding motion sickness-inducing pans to using lighting and leading lines to direct the audience’s gaze, the resource provides not just technical instruction but also creative best practices.

While immersive is not intended to replace traditional cinema, it offers a new layer of narrative possibility by placing audiences inside the story world rather than simply in front of it. Apple Vision Pro currently stands as the most advanced playback device for this format, with dual 3660 x 3200 micro-OLED displays, spatial audio, and precise head-and-eye tracking.

The technology is still young, but Blackmagic Design is clearly positioning itself at the forefront of this new chapter in filmmaking. By providing both tools and education, they are helping ensure that immersive storytelling is not just the domain of big studios but becomes accessible to independent creators as well. The URSA Cine Immersive guide is available now for free!

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I recently watched a new video on Panavision’s YouTube channel, and it’s enlightening for anyone passionate about cinematography and filmmaking. The question posed was simple yet revealing: what do some of the world’s top cinematographers do before they start their day on set?

Panavision gathered an impressive lineup of acclaimed filmmakers – names like Rodrigo Prieto, Mandy Walker, Autumn Durald Arkapaw, Phedon Papamichael and many more – to share their habits, rituals and go-to tools. The result is a candid conversation about what goes on behind the scenes of Hollywood sets.

The video explores three key questions: What do you always bring to set? What is your routine before a shoot? How do you know when a shot is ready?

Each filmmaker had a different approach, which is what makes this so interesting. Some swear by technical tools such as viewfinders, light meters, even a trusty black t-shirt to kill reflections, while others go for mood-boosting essentials like coffee or chocolate.

When it comes to routines, the common theme was starting early. Many said that getting to set ahead of time helps them get mentally aligned for the day or finalize lens choices before the chaos kicks in. That extra hour can make all the difference.

ABOVE: The Panavision video Rodrigo Prieto, Phedon Papamichael, and other filmmakers share what they NEED on set

And then there’s the advice that stuck with me the most from Adriano Goldman, the cinematographer behind The Crown and Andor. He said, "Of course, you want to be an artist, but you have to wake up on time first. You have to wake up, and you have to be there and show your presence and enthusiasm. And then you can be an artist.

"When the actors and the lights are up and on, you can finally exercise your artistry. Then you’re an artist. But before that, you’re a craftsman. You just have to show up and deliver."

That line stuck with me because it’s the truth most people don’t talk about. Cinematography, and photography for that matter, isn’t solely about creativity; it’s about discipline. You can’t create magic if you’re not there, ready, and fully present.

Personally, I love features like this. They’re a goldmine for emerging filmmakers because they go beyond theory and show you how the best in the business actually work day in, day out.

YouTube has become an incredible resource for learning this craft, if you know where to look and what to avoid. Videos like this one aren’t just interviews but blueprints for building your own creative process.

If you haven’t seen Panavision's YouTube channel yet, I highly recommend checking it out. It is a treasure trove of industry insights and advice.

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Earlier this year, Blackmagic Design released a major update to DaVinci Resolve, ushering in version 20 with a wave of new features. Now, just a few months later, another significant update has arrived, and this time, it’s all about immersive video.

DaVinci Resolve 20.1 introduces support for Apple Immersive workflows, marking a major leap into the future of spatial video. The update coincides with new releases for Fusion Studio 20.1 (Blackmagic's node-based compositing tool) and the Blackmagic Camera 9.7 Public Beta, with all three updates' primary focus on immersive video creators.

As always, Blackmagic knows how to deliver a hefty update. The full list of features is extensive, but the key highlights are:

• Full support for Apple Vision Pro spatial and immersive video workflows in macOS

• Direct monitoring of immersive content in Apple Vision Pro

• Support for the Apple Spatial Audio format

Not long ago, I shared my thoughts on the Apple Vision Pro and argued that immersive video is still in its infancy, but brimming with potential to reshape how we experience visual storytelling. Blackmagic seems to agree. The Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive camera, launched earlier this year, now pairs seamlessly with the DaVinci 20.1 and Fusion 20.1 updates to form a complete immersive production workflow; from capture through to edit, grade, and delivery.

Blackmagic describes the update as follows: "Today we announced DaVinci Resolve 20.1, a major new update that adds support for Apple Immersive workflows, including support for Apple Spatial Audio, to DaVinci Resolve Studio for macOS. With this update, you can effortlessly edit, color grade, add visual effects, mix Spatial Audio, and deliver Apple Immersive Video captured using the new Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive camera. A new immersive video viewer will let customers pan, tilt, and roll clips for viewing on 2D monitors, or directly stream to Apple Vision Pro for an even more immersive editing experience."

While immersive video is the headline, the update offers plenty for all DaVinci Resolve users. Key improvements include overhauls to the keyframe panel with better refinement controls, upgrades to MultiText making text formatting faster and more intuitive, and a more responsive and flexible curve editor.

Other enhancements span the Cut and Edit pages, Fusion, Color, Resolve FX, Fairlight, Codec and IO, and general performance refinements, all of which continue to make Resolve one of the most powerful editing platforms around.

Immersive filmmaking may not yet be mainstream, but Blackmagic is clearly working to lower the barrier to entry. With the URSA Cine Immersive camera and a free DaVinci Resolve update that supports spatial workflows end-to-end, they’re pushing this next wave of storytelling forward.

You can explore it yourself too, with sample immersive video clips for DaVinci Resolve Studio 20.1 (macOS) available to download.

And don’t forget, DaVinci Resolve remains completely free, and so is this 20.1 update.

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Video editing software comes in many shapes and sizes. An odd thing to say, you may be thinking, but with options for high-end professional productions to absolute beginner software available, perhaps you can see where I’m coming from. ACDSee Luxea Pro Video Editor 8 is aimed at beginners, enthusiasts and content creators, so it’s designed with ease of use in mind.

In reality, you could even use the software in a professional setting, although not when handling flat log footage. Footage captured in standard color profiles on any camera is what the software supports, and this is ultimately of no consequence since the software isn’t aimed specifically at professionals. Log support would, however, expand the appeal of the software.

Despite the inability to handle log footage, the software offers all of the controls and functionality you need to edit videos, including screen capture functionality. The timeline has been greatly improved since the previous version of the software, with drag-and-drop functionality. Plus, there are keyframes for adjusting sections of footage, adjustment layers for adding effects, text, transitions, filters and even behaviours to add flourishes to your videos.

ACDSee Luxea Pro Video Editor 8 could realistically be one of the best video editing software options available. This is simply because it’s a little bit different to the competition at the beginner end of the market, with the addition of useful screen capture functionality for content creators. This in itself could make it attractive since the market leader in this area, Camtasia, has become expensive.

ACDSee Luxea Pro Video Editor 8: Hardware requirements

• Intel Core i3 or AMD Ryzen or better processor, 2 GHz or faster
• 8GB RAM (16 GB RAM or for HD and 4K editing)
• Intel HD Graphics 530, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 or AMD Radeon R5 Graphics with 2 GB VRAM or better
• 4 GB VRAM required for editing HD and 4K videos
• DirectX 12 feature level 12_0 and 4 GB VRAM are required to run AI Super-Resolution on the GPU
• 1920x1080 display resolution minimum
• 4GB of available hard disk space (SSD recommended for editing HD and 4K videos)

ACDSee Luxea Pro Video Editor 8: Price and availability

ACDSee Luxea Pro Video Editor 8 is available in both perpetual and subscription-based licensing models, so you can choose the option that works best for you. The Individual Plan includes free updates and tech support for one install while the subscription is active, and this costs $49.99 per year.

The 365 Home Plan is $89.99 per year and includes everything in the Individual Plan as well as ACDSee Cloud, which includes photo editing software, 200GB of cloud storage and the ability to install the software on up to five computers. The Lifetime License is $99.99 and includes updates to version 8 of the software only. All pricing is in US Dollars, wherever you’re based.

ACDSee Luxea Pro Video Editor 8: Key features

It can be difficult to avoid creating a boring list of features, so rather than focusing on everything, we’ll give Luxea Pro 8 a quick overview and then highlight some of the more interesting new features in this version.

As previously mentioned, the software offers standard features including adjustment layers, text, transitions, filters, visual effects and keyframes for applying effects to specific sections of footage.

Two interesting and useful features are AI-Super-resolution and AI Motion Tracking. AI-Super-resolution allows you to upscale footage to 4K with simple Upscale and Upscale and Restore options available.

AI Motion Tracking allows you to select a subject or face, for example. All you have to do is select the feature and adjust the box over the desired part of the subject. The software then analyses the footage and aims to keep pixelation or another effect over the selected area.

Clips and edits, including sounds, music and graphics, can be saved as a Nest Sequence, which is a little like a Smart Object in Photoshop. These can also be saved as a Nest Preset for use across projects, so if you create an ident using multiple assets and effects, for example, and save it as a Nest Preset, you can easily apply it to all of your videos.

One feature I particularly like about the software is that it has a built-in screen recorder, so you can capture software tutorials or gameplay, etc., with optional microphone and webcam capture.

This functionality and some aspects of video editing in Luxea Pro 8 remind me of Camtasia. This is the best screen recording and screen capture editing software available, but it’s become extremely expensive with a new subscription-based license that replaces a perpetual licensing model.

Luxea Pro 8 could sweep up Camtasia customers while also offering easy-to-use standard video editing functionality. The only negative for screen capture editing is that you have to use keyframes for adjusting audio levels locally, rather than a more intuitive selection-based process where you select the portion of footage to apply sound adjustments quickly and easily.

There are also free content packs which include assets such as images, graphics and sounds. These assets are often themed around a subject such as sports, business, photography, animals and healthcare, etc. These can be downloaded from the ACDSee website or from within the software, which is the most logical way of previewing, downloading and installing.

ACDSee Luxea Pro Video Editor 8: Interface and useability

The user interface is laid out in a familiar way for video editing software, so whether you’re a beginner or an experienced user of this type of software, it’s presented logically. What I particularly like is that the interface isn’t overwhelming at all because it’s not overloaded with controls.

I appreciate it’s easy for me to say as an experienced user of video editing software, but I’m impressed by what ACDSee has packed into the software without making it overly complicated.

Of course, there is a learning curve as there is with all software. But this is software that you can muddle your way around easily enough and still produce decent results. The help menu is useful for times when you get stuck on something, and tutorial videos on the ACDSee YouTube account are useful.

The one feature I did find impossible was the ability to add behaviours, text and effects to AI Motion Tracking. Adding a Mosaic is achieved using a simple dropdown menu item in an obvious place, and I’m assuming that the dropdown menu should have more items than just ‘None’ and ‘Mosaic’.

Editing is incredibly simple, and you can expand points to the sides of the playhead to cut unwanted footage out, which is intuitive. Video and audio tracks can be stacked as normal, and effects can be dragged and dropped onto the timeline alongside text, transitions and overlays, etc. The process is based around drag and drop, which means you can hit the ground running even if you are an absolute beginner.

Since the editing process is based around drag and drop, with the ability to select sound and video using the playhead and markers, the reliance on keyframes for adjusting sections of audio and or video is frustratingly clunky. Keeping keyframes would be fine, but adding more selection-based functionality would be quicker and more intuitive.

ACDSee Luxea Pro Video Editor 8: Performance

I tested AI Super-resolution on a powerful laptop with an AMD Ryzen 7 processor, 32GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA GTX 4060 GPU, as well as an older but still powerful desktop. The specs of both far exceed what the software requires, and with both computers, AI-Super-resolution was painfully slow when increasing the size of a seven-minute 1080p video to 4K.

This interpolation took a staggering one hour to reach just 19% completion, so I gave up in frustration. I tried a three-second 1080p clip, and this took a more palatable yet also slow four minutes and five seconds to complete. Still far too long, though.

Performance is extremely poor, so you have to ask yourself, is this feature realistically usable, irrespective of results, for anything more than a video clip that’s a few seconds long? The upscaled video quality was impressive, but despite being a great idea, AI Super-resolution is completely impractical.

AI Motion Tracking works best with stable footage where only the subject is moving and not the camera. With both moving, the AI can struggle to maintain the subject. It’s certainly much easier than using keyframes and manually achieving the same result, but it can be hit or miss and certainly doesn’t work in all situations. All in all, the AI functionality is good in terms of results when it works, but performance is not good enough.

Aside from this, the software runs smoothly, and the ability to reduce playback resolution during editing is useful if you experience freezing or stuttering during editing. During testing, a 4K video froze and stuttered, so reducing playback quality by 1/2 resolved the issue without reducing image quality while editing too much.

Once editing is complete, you can export videos to a local file, a file suitable for a specific device using presets or directly to YouTube and Vimeo. A five-minute 4K video with transitions, sound and some music took two minutes to render at the highest Bitrate available of 150,000kbps in H.264, which is pretty good.

ACDSee Luxea Pro Video Editor 8: Verdict

ACDSee Luxea Pro Video Editor 8 is easy-to-use video editing software with the added benefit of powerful screen capture tools, making it useful for creating tutorials and capturing gameplay. The tools and features on offer are great for beginners and enthusiasts, possibly even professionals, although the AI-powered features don’t quite live up to their promises.

This aside, the software offers all the features you need for quickly and easily editing videos. Adding transitions and effects is an easy drag-and-drop affair for applying adjustments layers and other effects with ease. While keyframing is available for making a range of adjustments to portions of footage. All this is available for a reasonable price with perpetual and subscription licensing options on offer.

ACDSee Luxea Pro Video Editor 8: Alternatives

Back in August 2024 I chatted to cinematographer Andrew Rodger about the challenges of filming his ‘sharks on a plane’ cult movie, No Way Up, which hung around the Amazon Top 10 for over a week.

In June 2025 I reunited with Andrew on his return from filming the thriller movie, Sessions, to chat about how he used a set of vintage lenses to get a more retro filmic look.

We had two macro lenses on the production, this and a Laowa. I think that's also 20mm, but it's a big, long, thin probe lens. Again, not a hugely expensive lens. That was an EF mount as well. So we used that to get into packets and things and get very close to objects.

But it's quite an imposing, sharp bit of kit, and you don't really want to put it near an actor's eye! But the Vivitar lens is nice. It's a big, soft, flat thing that's not going to hurt anyone. So I use this quite a lot for being close to actors, basically.

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Video switchers used to be reserved for larger production houses, but they are now accessible to most, in part thanks to the sheer number of people taking YouTube production more seriously. Companies like RGBlink have been introducing devices that cater to this use case, at a more affordable price point, but are they any good? I’ve tested a few of these, and there is often somewhat of a compromise in their design, so I was keen to see what the mini ISO has to offer, as on paper it looks like a great option with some features that make it pretty scalable.

But what is a video switcher? In essence, it is exactly as the name would suggest. A device that takes multiple inputs and allows the operator to switch which incoming signal it sends to the output, but it gets more interesting than that, with things like transitions, audio mixing, and much more appearing on spec sheets. I’ve been testing the mini ISO for a few weeks, and this is what I’ve found…

RGBlink mini ISO: Specifications

RGBlink mini ISO: Price

Available now at $599 / £599, which is a good price for such a well-featured device. The overall build quality and the feature list could suggest a higher price, making the mini ISO feel that much more of a bargain.

RGBlink mini ISO: Design & Handling

The RGBlink mini ISO ships with a few accessories. You get a USB-C to USB-C cable and power adapter. You can power this from a power bank too, but I’d say the use cases for that are limited. Maybe for doing a garden cooking show, where a power outlet isn’t available, or something similar.

You get a USB-A type 3 cable for connection to a host computer and a 3.5mm cable for audio, which is the split type for both phone and microphone.

The actual unit itself is very nicely made, although smaller than you might expect (the name should have probably made me realise this), at just under 200mm x 112mm x 60mm to the top of the controls. Although tiny, nothing feels cramped. There’s good room to get at all the controls, the channel buttons are a decent size, and the T bar is both nicely sized and weighted.

The mini ISO’s chassis is folded metal, lending a little confidence-inspiring heft to it, while also helping to keep it in place, once multiple inputs and the associated trailing cables are attached. There are 9 channel inputs on offer, split into 4 SDI ports down the side and 4 HDMI type 2.0 along the rear, that support 4K 60p max. There’s a USB-A port on the side for connecting a storage device for recording a production, plus can also be used as a webcam output for streaming. That split audio cable can be used for input in one of the two 3.5mm ports, while a second port is for output. Two HDMI 1.3 ports serve for monitoring purposes, and there’s a gigabit Ethernet port rounding off a pretty comprehensive set of IO.

Then there’s the top face. This houses a joystick for PTZ camera control, the T bar, menu buttons, and channel selecting buttons that illuminate white, green, or blue to help you see what is being selected for various uses. Each HDMI input has an audio levels rotary knob alongside an AFV button, plus there are audio controls for incoming analogue audio and master output levels.

Then there is the screen. At 3.5” it isn’t all that big, but it is clear and bright. Maybe not bright enough for outdoor use, but perfectly usable even in a brightly lit studio. What’s more, it’s a touchscreen, so if you prefer navigating menus and operating this way, you are sorted. Overall, the build quality feels excellent. It’s robust and weighty while not being excessively so. I do wish RGBlink supplied a case for it, but for the majority of users, I imagine this will find a home on a desk and rarely be moved. It does seem a missed opportunity for added value for something so compact and portable, however.

RGBlink mini ISO: Performance

Let’s start with the screen. It’s quite a responsive touchscreen, and I haven’t once had a missed input.

Clarity, colour, and contrast are good too. I couldn’t find anything from RGBlink giving specifications for this, but it works fine for previewing channel content ready for switching, timing transitions, and basic operations. The menus are clear and concise, too. All very logical and reminiscent of what you get on field monitors, allowing you to keep an eye on your content while you make selections.

The same applies for the physical controls. Everything is clearly labelled and logical. A glance at the quick start guide is all that’s needed. Simply plug your sources in and you’ll be ready to go in minutes. One thing to note is that the SDI ports only support HD signals. That may work for your needs, but while the HDMI is good for 4K, SDI is preferable for longer cable runs, and not every device will have an HDMI output. My Pyxis, for example, doesn’t have HDMI, and I was hoping to use SDI. It hooks up fine, but you won’t get the full resolution, so I’ll need to look into using a converter box for this. Not a massive deal, but worth considering.

Once everything is hooked up, things couldn’t be simpler. Use the pots on the left to set audio levels, with the AFV letting you define whether audio switches automatically with video source changes or not. Then you can set previews and live sources using the two rows of illuminated buttons. These are great for an at-a-glance operation; White means there’s a source connected, green for preview and red for programme.

Beneath the hood, there are some extra features that are nice to have. The star here is chroma keying, which works surprisingly well. There are options for green or blue, with adjustments for spill. I was surprised at how good the results were, and overlaying keyed footage on top of a second source looks great.

You can hook up to a PTZ camera too, with remote control via the five-way joystick. I don’t have any PTZ cameras to try this with, but I have no doubt this would work as expected, especially when the rest of the mini ISO is so good.

Some switchers don’t simply jump from source to source upon selection, others have some predefined transitions, but the mini ISO goes the next step with the T bar. Once you have a clip live, you can preview the next source, then smoothly transition, at a speed you like, into that second source.

I found everything works really well here. Not just the physical device, but the workflow too. It’s really easy to navigate and to set things up just how you like. You may be live streaming (the mini ISo can stream to a max of four platforms concurrently) or doing a multicam recording for your channel. No matter what, it is a very intuitive process.

On top of that, there are scenes. These effectively are presets you can recall. If you do regular YouTube shows, with say a couple of different setups, then you can store them as scenes, meaning far less pre-production setup. Simply activate the correct scene and off you go. Very useful indeed. If you do a lot of these productions, then a permanent setup makes sense. Run your cables to your set and tuck the switcher somewhere close to hand. You can run the multiview HDMI to a larger monitor that is in your eyeline, to ensure results are as you want, and start recording or streaming.

Now, the only thing I wasn’t mad about was the output recording. The only option here is 16 Mbps 8-bit MP4. That may be fine for doing instructional videos or live streams, but it feels a bit lacklustre these days. Of course, you could take your HDMI output to another device and record there, but that adds complexity, cost, and logistics to what is really a very nice package. That said, the latency is very good at just 3 frames. Not bad for multicam processing, switching, keying, recording, and streaming. All at once.

My only other niggle is the lack of pro-level audio inputs. This isn’t a dealbreaker, especially if you’re connecting cameras via HDMI, but an XLR input would be nice. The form factor would have had to take a hit then, though, so it’s a trade-off I’m willing to make.

RGBlink mini ISO: Verdict

The RGBlink mini ISO is one of those devices that manages to quietly surpass expectations. It’s not perfect, as a few minor letdowns have shown, but it isn’t far off and is more than capable of delivering on the task at hand. The build, layout, and overall quality are excellent. Should you need a switcher that offers an intuitive experience, along with a few added benefits, then it is absolutely one to add to your shopping basket.

Alternatives

In an era dominated by digital workflows and CGI, Jurassic World Rebirth is taking a bold step back to move forward. The upcoming blockbuster is shot entirely on Kodak film, a decision that director Gareth Edwards says was key to capturing the look and feel of the movies that inspired him.

"All the films I grew up loving were shot on Kodak," says Edwards in a new behind-the-scenes video (embedded below). "So I fought really hard that we shot this on Kodak with Panavision lenses".

It’s a rare choice in today’s high-stakes tentpole filmmaking. Yet more often, when film has been the chosen medium, it has resulted in great acclaim; the Brutalist and Sinners being recent examples of films shot on Kodak film.

But for Edwards, whose past work includes Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and The Creator, the decision was rooted in emotion as much as aesthetics. "The way film stock works is it’s not a perfect representation of reality," he explains. "It’s a better version of reality".

ABOVE: Watch the behind-the-scenes video of Jurassic World Rebirth

Kodak’s film stock lends the movie a richness that’s hard to replicate digitally, especially when capturing lush jungle environments and complex VFX sequences. "The colors are more sophisticated, there's more fidelity in the colors," comments director of photography, John Mathieson. "The greens of the jungles really come through."

Shot on anamorphic lenses, the film embraces imperfections like distortion, chromatic aberration and edge softness, adding character to the footage. Not to mention that elusive grain that gives film its organic, immersive feel. These visual qualities enhance the images and also help blend digital effects, such as the dinosaurs, more seamlessly into the world.

The Jurassic World franchise is a masterclass in VFX, and you'd be forgiven for thinking that film would be counterintuitive to the heavy VFX load. However, the filmmakers pushed for film stock because it offered the strongest foundation to build on.

"I’d rather start with a canvas, a beautiful image, and paint on top of that, says visual effects supervisor, David Vickery. "Having the film stock and the film veneer and grain and these really beautiful wide anamorphic distorted lenses to work with has been really beautiful. It's something that helped us bed the visual effects and the creatures into."

The choice signals a growing trend: big-budget filmmakers returning to analog formats to elevate their visual storytelling. And if the early footage is anything to go by, Jurassic World Rebirth might be one of the most visually textured entries in the franchise yet. I, for one, am very excited!

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If you're wondering what to choose between 4K 30 vs 4K 60, what you're really asking about is video framerate. This, quite simply, is the number of frames captured for each second of filming (fps). Video does in fact consist of individual still frames, which are captured and played back so quickly that they give the impression of smooth, continuous movement.

So if you see a camera can shoot at 4K 30p, that means it can shoot at 30 frames per second. Technically (before anyone writes in), in some instances, it might be  29.97fps, but that’s a legacy of the old US NTSC broadcast format. I’ll keep it simple and just talk about 30fps as a common standard framerate.

Incidentally, don’t worry about the ‘p’ on the end. This is to distinguish modern ‘progressive’ video from outdated ‘interlaced’ video from old analog TV broadcasts, which is indicated with an ‘i’. Really, you can take it for granted that all modern cameras shoot progressive video, and very often people will leave out the ‘p’ after the framerate number.

So what about 25fps and 24fps?

There are all sorts of discussions about which framerate looks best or is most appropriate. These days, where video is delivered and viewed digitally, it hardly matters from a technical standpoint, so really it’s a creative choice.

Nowadays 30fps is pretty much a universal basic framerate. If you don’t know what framerate to choose, choose 30fps. Some cameras will offer 25fps, depending on the territory in which they’re sold (which is like a throwback to the PAL TV system and not really important now). If your camera offers 25fps not 30fps, 25fps is fine.

Also of note, 24fps gives what many consider a ‘cinematic’ look to video, as it’s a standard framerate for movie productions. The differences are very nuanced, and if you’re new to video it can be hard to see the difference.

What are faster framerates for?

The best hybrid cameras can shoot video at 60fps, 120fps and faster – so what’s the point of that? There are three reasons, really. First, if you shoot video at 60fps and play it back at the same speed, you will be able to capture fast movement with more clarity and definition, though many feel that this gives video a rather unpleasant ‘brittle’ or ‘choppy’ look.

Another reason is so that you can create slow-motion effects. If you film at 60fps and then play back the video at 30fps, you get a 2x slow-motion effect. Sometimes the camera will have an ‘S&Q’ mode, which encodes the video for slower playback automatically; otherwise you’ll need to adjust the playback speed in a video editor.

A third reason for filming at a higher framerate is that it gives you more editing flexibility later. If you shoot video at 60fps, for example, you can still reduce this to 30fps for sharing at normal speed, but you have the option to include slow-motion sequences as well.

Video framerates and ‘timelines’

If you’re sharing your videos as-is, with no further editing, you don’t need to worry about the framerates of editing ‘timelines’. But if you’re editing together a whole bunch of clips into a movie with a video editor, they will be assembled into a ‘timeline’ which also has a set framerate.

For example, if you plan to make a movie with an overall timeline framerate of 30fps, then you really need to shoot all your footage at 30fps. The best video-editing software can ‘conform’ videos shot at different framerates to match the one you’ve chosen for your movie timeline, but it’s not ideal.

You can incorporate higher-framerate footage for slow-motion effects, but this works best if it’s an exact multiple of your project’s framerate. So in a 30fps timeline, you could add in video shot at 60fps and 120fps too for slow-motion sequences.

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MrBeast, the YouTube channel with the most subscribers across the entire platform, is known for high-dollar challenges, from smashing Lamborghinis to giving away millions of dollars for completing off-the-wall challenges.

But that sort of nothing-is-off-limits approach applies to what happens behind the scenes, too – including putting cameras in dangerous situations.

During the Bild Expo in New York City, I filed into an auditorium with content creators and videographers to go behind the scenes of the YouTube channel with more than 400 million subscribers.

In a room full of filmmakers and gear nerds, MrBeast head of camera department, Ryan Elwell, and head of post and executive producer of Beast Games, Joshua Kulic, made a confession: nothing, including destroying cameras to get the shot, is off the table.

“Nothing is off limits, and I love that about MrBeast,” Elwell said. “I’ve put a lot of equipment in very compromising situations, and I will continue to do it for the video, for the end product. If that train is going to be hitting a Lamborghini, I’m going to be putting a camera right there, and there goes that camera, but it’s worth it for the shot.”

Kulic added, “We have melted carcasses of cameras just lining the camera case.”

While the team says that nothing is off limits, the camera crew doesn’t have an allegiance to a particular brand. “We will use anything,” Elwell said.

“We will use Arri or any other cinema camera like Reds. We use Canon, Sony, GoPro, iPhones. It really doesn’t matter. We’re all about how we can get that angle, how can we get that shot, and how can we have as little impact as possible on the atmosphere or the environment.”

During the interview-style presentation, Elwell discussed how the camera can have a psychological impact on the video’s atmosphere. He explained that how a contestant feels with a big camera pointed in their direction could interfere with the fairness of the game.

So while sometimes the camera crew is placing cameras right in the middle of a crash, other times the team is hanging back with long lenses, or dressing in suits or referee costumes and using smaller cameras to better blend in.

Describing the production team behind MrBeast as large is an understatement, but throughout the interview Elwell and Kulic repeatedly described how the team works together and communicates from the planning process through post-production.

The MrBeast team currently holds the world record for the most cameras filming simultaneously on a reality TV show, with 1,107, including 1,000 GoPros and 107 cameras.

During that same episode, the team broke 44 Guinness Records, including the most cinema cameras used for a single reality TV season with 43 and the most expensive reality show season at $100,000,000 (which is about £72,960,049 / AU$153,268,873).

“Behind the scenes, we have a huge team sometimes, hundreds of camera operators, safety teams, teams that are prepping and getting ready for construction, and there’s a lot of time and prep that goes into prior to ever pressing record,” Elwell said.

“It’s a huge scale, but sometimes we can break that down to one camera operator and one audio guy, it just depends on what tools are needed for the job.”

Coordinating teams and budgets that large isn’t a small undertaking, but Kulic said the team embraces controlled chaos, an approach that applies from planning to framing the story in post production. “We like chaos to an extent. Controlled chaos, right?” Kulic laughed.

“But that’s born out of the authenticity of the channel. We are not scripted at all. We want to keep that organic nature. The contestants are going to drive the story, and we’re just creating boundary boxes. Everything is built around that, so you have to be able to be flexible in the moment.”

A key element of the MrBeast channel is the storytelling. Elwell joked that when Kulic – who was his friend prior to working together at MrBeast – first started working for the company, prompting his response, “Who is MrBeast?” Elwell said he then started watching the videos and looked over to see his wife crying. “This is not just YouTube, there’s a lot of emotion and authenticity here.”

Both planning and pivoting feel key to the MrBeast channel’s knack for storytelling. “At the end of the day, we’re all movie buffs, we all love movies and cinema in general and our viewers are the same way,” Elwell said.” Although it is social media, it is YouTube, it’s faster, we understand that our viewers are still craving that emotional connection and authenticity. We’re always thinking about that.”

Elwell went on to explain that, during the planning process, the team talks about what could happen and where to place cameras and videographers to anticipate being in the right place at the right time. With the unscripted nature of the channel, however, he added that the team is constantly pivoting.

“We compare [the process] to a train, it’s a constantly moving train and it’s Josh and my responsibility to stay ahead of the train, and lay the track and the foundation and just be ready for anything that could happen because that train could go left, it could go right, it could go off a cliff.”

“We have the be ready for that cliff. We’re ready for any pivot that could happen. That’s part of the fun of MrBeast, too, is just the constant pivoting.”

Continuing the storytelling in post is done with a large team of video editors. “Emotion and, beyond that, the through line of the story is going to be the biggest thing,” Kulic said. “What is the story? What are we trying to do? I think when people think of MrBeast, it's the fast cutting, and that’s part of it at the beginning… but I think it's just finding those natural stories in the moment.”

Breaking 44 records in one event is something that feels hard to outdo with the next video, but Elwell says that something they ask themselves every video is, “How we we outdo our last video?”

“Our audience is faithful,” Ellwell said, “but they also want to see us push the envelope and raise the bar again and again and again. A lot of that is in the prep and the people and pieces that we put into place. We have a great team… because we are always collaborating, which brings in a lot of creative ideas. Everyone has a voice, it’s not just one person.”

Shooting and then editing footage from 1,107 cameras sounds impossible, but Kulic advises filmmakers to start small and scale up from there. “Break things down into smaller blocks for yourself. You don’t need to think of 1,000 cameras; maybe it’s 12 groups of 80. We’re finding ways to break things down and scale up from there… Start with one camera, add ten.”

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Earlier this month, UK-based filmmaker Juliet Klottrup was announced as the Non-Fiction winner of the 2025 Sony Future Filmmaker Awards, an accolade that arrives with both a global spotlight and significant momentum.

Selected from over 11,750 submissions across 158 countries and territories, her winning short Travelling Home stood out in a fiercely competitive field.

Shot on 16mm film, Travelling Home offers a quiet and deeply considered look at identity, belonging, and the rhythms of tradition. At its heart is the annual pilgrimage to Appleby Horse Fair in Cumbria, England, seen through the eyes of an English Romany Traveller.

With striking visuals and a poetic edit that blends memory, landscape, and voice, Klottrup invites us into a world rarely seen with such intimacy. In this conversation, she reflects on the film’s making and her creative process.

Above: Travelling Home by Juliet Klottrup

At just over five minutes, Travelling Home achieves what many longer films struggle to. It builds connection, trust, and emotional weight in a fleeting span of time. It’s a film that is patient, beautiful, and quietly powerful.

In the modern era, defined by speed and scroll, Klottrup offers a welcome pause. That she’s able to do this so deftly, with such a light yet deliberate touch, is a testament to her instinct as a storyteller and a clear signal that hers is a voice to watch.

A huge congratulations to Juliet on her award. I urge you to take 5 minutes and check out her short film, Travelling Home, available to watch now on Juliet Klottrup's YouTube channel.

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Apple TV+’s The Studio isn’t just one of the funniest shows of the year, it’s also one of the most daringly made. While it skewers the absurdities of the film industry with deadpan precision, it's also a masterclass in filmmaking. Behind the laughs is a bold visual language anchored by a single idea: one camera, one lens, one continuous take.

In a new behind-the-scenes video interview released by Dolby, Director of Photography Adam Newport-Berra breaks down how this distinctive approach came to life.

Above: A Dolby YouTube video featuring an interview with The Studio DP Adam Newport-Berra

It all began with a deceptively casual pitch from creators Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg: "Yeah, we want to shoot the show with one camera, with one lens, and we want to do everything in one shot," Newport-Berra recalls.

But behind the simplicity was a carefully considered strategy. The long take or 'oner' wasn’t a gimmick but a way of injecting nervous energy into each scene, echoing the relentless pressure of the film world the show so gleefully satirizes. A similar technique was used to great effect in Adolescence, the British drama now on Netflix, where it heightened emotional tension and immersion.

Newport-Berra, known for his work on one-shot music videos and ambitious long takes, actively sought out the project. "I really love working within the confines of some sort of restriction," he explains. "To me, it’s actually the most liberating thing you can do, because it frees up your mind to think about other things."

Every technical choice served the vision. The team used an ARRI Alexa 35 and just one cine lens throughout: a 21mm Zeiss Master Prime at T1.3. That single setup gave them incredible flexibility. Tight close-ups and wide master shots could all be captured in one flowing move.

The lens’s close focus was crucial for zipping between facial expressions and full-room coverage, while its speed enabled them to work with minimal artificial lighting, vital when shooting in 360 degrees.

Perhaps the most elegant solution came when facing exposure changes. Moving from sunlit exteriors to dim interiors in a single take normally requires stopping down, which would kill the show’s signature shallow depth of field. Instead, they used a remotely controlled variable ND filter, essentially two polarizers mounted together and adjusted remotely by the DIT (Digital Imaging Technician). This enabled the crew to keep the lens wide open while smoothly adapting to changing light, without sacrificing image texture.

The most ambitious episode, fittingly titled The Oner, comes in Episode 2, a 25-minute continuous shot set across multiple real-world locations in Los Angeles, including a famous John Lautner house with towering glass walls. "There’s really no cheating magic hour," Newport-Berra says, underscoring the near-impossible challenge of controlling natural light in such a space.

But somehow, they pulled it off, and what’s left isn’t just a visually clever comedy. The Studio is proof that strict creative limitations can lead to extraordinary invention. Rogen, Goldberg, and Newport-Berra didn’t just commit to a bit; they committed to a visual philosophy. In doing so, they’ve shown that even in the world of episodic comedy, bold, cinematic storytelling still has a place and can be just as thrilling as any blockbuster set piece.

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Seen the astonishing results you can achieve with Google's new AI video tool, Veo 3? If not, the short version is that just by typing a text prompt, you can now generate a fake video clip that's indistinguishable from the real thing. And if you work in film-making, that should scare you quite a bit.

Let's not beat around the bush. This kind of AI technology is undeniably going to lead to job losses in film-making. And I'm not here to sugar-coat this or feed you comforting lies about AI being "just another tool". That's the kind of patronising nonsense that gets trotted out every time tech steamrolls an entire profession.

But here's the thing. While everyone's busy having panic attacks about our silicon overlords, they're completely missing the main thing that's killing film-making. AI isn't the problem. Bad film-making is.

The real crisis

Walk into any cinema right now and what do you find? Sequel number seven of a franchise that should have died three instalments ago. Remakes of films that were barely worth making the first time. Superhero movies that feel like they were assembled by committees of people who have never experienced joy.

I've spent the last decade watching executives greenlight projects based on algorithms, market research and international box office projections rather than, you know, whether the story is actually worth telling.

Studios have been using artificial intelligence to guide their decisions for years; they just called it "data analytics" and pretended it was sophisticated.

Even Disney's fallen foul of this. Their recent focus has been on making live action versions of their animated classics, which no one wants and have generally been terrible. This hit a new low point in 2025 with a dreadful remake of Snow White that even the brilliant Rachel Zegler couldn't save.

What audiences want

Audiences are starving for good stories, well told. They're desperate for characters they can care about, dialogue that sounds like actual humans wrote it, and plots that don't insult their intelligence. These aren't high bars to clear, but somehow, we keep limbo-dancing under them anyway.

In short, the problem isn't that we need more technology. The problem is that we've forgotten how to use the technology we already have to serve the story (rather than the other way around).

To be fair, if you look hard enough, there are still great films out there. Out right now are four superb releases I'd urge everyone to check out: The Surfer, Shiva Baby, Good One and Hallow Road. Unfortunately, they're the exceptions that prove the rule. And if the average person has been disappointed on their last three multiplex visits, they're unlikely to take a risk on another dull evening.

The democratisation myth

"But AI will democratise filmmaking!" cry the tech evangelists. "Now anyone can make a movie!" Sure, and anyone can already write a novel using Microsoft Word. How's that working out for the quality of literature?

Tools have never been the barrier to good storytelling. You can shoot a compelling film on your phone – people have been proving this for years. (Watch out Unsane (2018) or Tangerine (2015) if you don't believe me.) Indeed, for not much more than the cost of an iPhone 16 Pro Max, you can get an impressive pro camera like the RED Komodo 6K.

In short, the barrier to great film-making has never been technological; it's having something interesting to say, and the skill to say it well.

Yes, AI might make it easier to generate pretty pictures or smooth out rough edges. But it can't give you a point of view. It can't inject soul into soulless material. It can't turn a boring person into an interesting storyteller.

What AI will do – and is already doing – is amplify whatever you feed into it. Feed it mediocre ideas, get mediocre results. Feed it derivative concepts, get derivative output. Feed it the same tired tropes that have been recycling through Hollywood for decades, and congratulations, you've just automated the production of cinematic landfill.

The real terror isn't that AI will replace human creativity. It's that it will replace human creativity with exactly the same level of uninspired garbage we're already drowning in, just faster and cheaper.

So here's the silver lining. While AI churns out its thousand variations on a theme, the creators who understand character, who can write dialogue that doesn't sound like it came from a chatbot, who know how to build genuine emotional stakes; they're going to stand out like fireworks in a grey sky.

If you're a filmmaker whose main skill is following established formulas, then yes, you should be worried. But if you're someone who actually has something to say, who understands why some stories resonate while others fall flat, who can spot the difference between content and art, then you're not being made obsolete. You're being made essential.

Humans would rather change shape than turn their phones sideways. It's the only logical conclusion after years of commuting and seeing every generation of Londoner and New Yorker watching vertical format video – despite their eyes still being on their head side-by-side.

There is no reason not to turn the phone on the side. There is plenty of horizontal format video out there that simply makes more sense to the mind, yet we all choose not to for some reason.

Personally I'm old enough to remember when we all got excited about 'widescreen' (16:9) TVs replacing 4:3 ones – providing the extra width for a more natural look.

That was when TVs were still largely cathode ray tubes, and there were a lot of reasons to be suspicious about such an 'upgrade', but it was definitely closer to the shape in the theater – which was the virtue that the TV sales folk were hammering home.

Now we live in a world some folk are trying to sell us phones that we flip, fold and open – yet most people don't even bother to rotate them. So much so that we've created a whole new generation of capture device!

You can get drones that rotate their cameras in the sky just to capture video in portrait format. The best 360 cameras make it easy to re-format video after you've shot it, as do cameras with open gate video – getting portrait format and widescreen!

So what's up with us? Why don't we seem to want the video to be 'epic' and 'immersive', as Hollywood promised us things would be when we all started buying TVs in 16:9 'widescreen'? (Of course, compared to some cinema formats, 16:9 isn't actually that 'wide' – but that's a conversation for another day…)

At first I didn't really get it. I still don't quite. After all, the first big video platform online – the one that still ruled the roost when the iPhone and the App Store created the phone we recognize today – was YouTube.

And YouTube was (at first, anyway) exclusively in landscape format, like most monitors on the web. And TVs, even in the not-that-wide 4:3 days, were still in landscape format. So most content, at first, was horizontal.

A TV could only be in one format once it was made, after all – unlike a phone it is big and heavy and hard to re-position to fit whatever content has just arrived. So everyone goes with the most logical arrangement for humans, right?

Yes, yes they do. The most logical arrangement is to have the image broader than it is tall because that is how our eyes are arranged. It's what, evolutionarily, helps us perceive the world around us and move around it. Only animals that behave unusually need their eyes arranged any other way (ask my friend the Wolf Spider).

So far as I can see, the iPhone and followers introduced most people to 'tall' screens, taking up the space once occupied with buttons with even more screen, meaning that users then had the choice of rotating their device to efficiently view video full-screen, or just seeing black bars. And some people just went with the black bars.

Moreover, some software developers didn't allow for rotation immediately anyway – which created doubt. Doubt created the chance at portrait format video and, from then, it was bound to happen that someone would do it.

It seems that many of us don't even want to go to the effort of turning our phones. We'd rather the content turned to suit us. The whole creation system was turned on its head.

Even if it means we lose the 'epic' feeling of width because our eyes – if we're honest – have not moved into a vertical arrangement like the additional eyes of the Wolf Spider.

I used to think that mattered a lot (and, as a creator, it is definitely super annoying), but perhaps it doesn't. Perhaps it is a clever delineation between video content that has (or is trying to have) artistic merit, and content that is largely about the self.

Selfie format? Portrait format? TikTok? It's all one and the same, right?

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To see my review of the new rotating camera drone, checck the DJI Mavic 4 Pro, or the cheaper DJI Mini 4 Pro. Don't forget to look for the best 360 degree cameras too, and check out the DJI Osmo Pocket 3 with rotating camera and screen!

Adventure, the immersive Apple TV+ series directed by Charlotte Mikkelborg, is revolutionary in how we experience visual storytelling. The show follows top athletes in high-action sports, using the immersive power of the Apple Vision Pro.

I was fortunate to have the chance to watch two episodes, 'Parkour' and 'Ice Dive', both of which left me completely in awe.

In 'Parkour' we’re taken on a journey through the streets and over the rooftops of Paris with three of the world’s leading athletes (Drew Taylor, Toby Segar and Joshua Burnett-Blake from Storror) as they navigate the birthplace of parkour. The episode ends with a heart-stopping rooftop jump high above the city streets.

Then, in 'Ice Dive', we’re right there with freediver Ant Williams as he attempts to break the world record for swimming the longest distance under ice in a single breath. Both episodes were visually stunning, but the real magic came from the immersive experience of watching them on the Apple Vision Pro.

I’ve heard people say it before but, experiencing it firsthand, I can confidently say that it really did feel like you were there. From the dizzying heights of Parisian rooftops to the freezing cold of the Arctic waters, I felt totally transported.

With nearly 8K resolution per eye, close to our native vision, the clarity and immersion were immediate; you didn’t have to adjust, it was just there, right in front of you.

Still trying to wrap my head around what I had just experienced, I had the chance to sit down with Charlotte Mikkelborg herself to talk about how she got into immersive filmmaking, her approach to Adventure, and what the future of this format holds.

It was a fascinating conversation about the challenges and potential of creating experiences that put you right in the middle of the action.

Adventure shows just how powerful immersive filmmaking can be when it’s done right. Watching it on the Apple Vision Pro wasn’t just watching, it was living it, right there on the rooftops of Paris and under the ice in the Arctic.

Charlotte Mikkelborg’s thoughtful, high-stakes direction proves that XR storytelling has some incredible places to go. I can absolutely see how this is the future of experiencing visual storytelling, and I’m genuinely excited to see what else is in store.

Check out Adventure now on Apple TV+, with Episode 5, 'Hill Climb', streaming now exclusively for the Apple Vision Pro.

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If you're wondering what is a LUT, you're not alone – the phrase has only entered the mainstream imaging lexicon fairly recently, but it has certainly spread like wildfire.

LUT is an abbreviation. It stands for lookup table, a rather dry and dusty definition that doesn’t even hint at what LUTs can do. And while they're primarily used by video folks, they can also be employed in photography post-production as well.

They have two main uses in videography and editing/grading. One is to convert images from one color space or profile to another – for example, if you’ve shot in a Sony log profile and you need to convert that to a regular color space for editing and sharing.

The second, increasingly popular use, is to apply creative tonal and color shifts for stylized ‘looks’.

What is a LUT: Must-know #1

LUTs are not just another type of picture style or simulation. They are, very literally, conversion tables that take pixel values from the original image or video, and change them to other pixel values with various tone and color shifts.

If you’re into color-managed desktop printing, you’ll be familiar with custom ‘printer profiles’ and ‘monitor profiles’. It’s a bit like that, but often used for creative purposes, not just color correction.

For this explanation I’ll stick to ‘creative’ LUTs, since this is the major trend right now. The way they work means you can shift colors and tones in any direction you like, for cross-processing effects, black-and-white filter effects and just about any other effect you can carry out with color and tone adjustments.

There are no sliders or adjustments with LUTs; they just do what they do. There are tools you can use to design your own LUTs, such as fylm.ai, for example.

This is probably a job for color grading experts, though, because there are many subtleties involved in producing effective and attractive color and tonal shifts that can be applied across a range of images/videos.

That’s the first thing to know about LUTs. It sounds a limitation, but a properly-designed LUT can be a friend for life. Once you start trying them out you will quickly find favorites that you will want to use again and again.

What is a LUT: Must-know #2

But perhaps the key point about LUTs is that they use a standardized .cube format that can be used across multiple devices and editors. You could load a LUT that you love in your video editing software into your Panasonic Lumix S9, for example, or use the same LUT in your photo editing software.

Not all photo editors support LUTs, and some use them (incorrectly) as an effect filter mixed in with the other editing tools. It’s best to think of LUTs as a kind of pre-processing treatment ahead of your actual editing. If you work in Lightroom you’ll be familiar with Profiles, which do a similar job – though it would be nice if Lightroom used LUTs instead!

So are LUTs the future? For videographers, they are an important technical and creative tool. For stills photographers, presets and filters do the same job with a little more control – but even here, once you’ve found some favorite LUTs, there’s often no going back.

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In an age where AI-generated imagery and heavy CGI have become almost the norm, The Legend of Ochi, A24’s new fantasy film, feels like a breath of fresh air.

Directed by Isaiah Saxon, short filmmaker and director of music videos for artists like Björk, it leans into something increasingly rare: a world built by hand, photographed through the lens, and brought to life with practical effects and puppetry.

At the center of the story is the baby Ochi creature; not a CGI creation, but a fully practical puppet operated by five puppeteers, led by veteran puppeteer Robert Tygner (whose credits include numerous Muppet movies and David Bowie classic Labyrinth). Every blink and every subtle movement was performed live on set.

ABOVE: A behind-the-scenes video for The Legend of Ochi

Watching the behind-the-scenes footage in a video released by A24, it’s immediately clear how much this choice changes the relationship between the subject, the camera, the viewer and, from a filmmaking perspective, the light.

The creature isn't dropped into the scene later in post-production; it's there in the moment, interacting with real light, casting real shadows, and giving actors something tangible to react to. For photographers and filmmakers, it’s a powerful reminder of the emotional weight that comes from photographing what’s physically in front of you.

Of course, this isn’t to say that green and blue screens weren’t used – you can spot them in the behind-the-scenes footage, helping to extend certain backgrounds – but the heart of The Legend of Ochi remains rooted in practical craft.

The emphasis looks to be on photographing something real, giving the fantasy world a genuine texture that can’t be faked.

Saxon and his team doubled down on that tactile feeling throughout the production. The Legend of Ochi was filmed largely on location in Romania’s wild landscapes, rather than relying entirely on digital environments.

Cinematographer Evan Prosofsky also used vintage 1930s cine lenses to give the imagery a softness and timelessness you can't recreate digitally.

They also incorporated over 200 traditional matte paintings, another nod to classic techniques, to expand the world without overwhelming it with synthetic effects.

The film’s approach to sound stayed equally grounded. Instead of synthetic effects, the creature sounds were performed by Paul "The Birdman" Manalatos, a YouTuber known for making intricate bird calls with his throat. It's a small detail, but it ties back to the same idea of using human craft to bring the world of Ochi to life.

Visually and tonally, the movie taps into the nostalgia of Eighties fantasy films like Willow and The NeverEnding Story (whose third installment featured puppet work by Tygner) – stories where you could feel the texture of the world, where the magic had weight and grit.

The Legend of Ochi is filled with that same handmade spirit, and it's the kind of film that feels best experienced on the big screen, surrounded by the atmosphere of a theater. Released on April 25, I’d highly recommend heading to your local theater if you’re looking for a hit of true fantasy movie nostalgia.

For photographers and filmmakers, The Legend of Ochi stands as a timely reminder that in an era increasingly shaped by AI and digital shortcuts, there’s still unmatched power in photographing and filming real, tangible subjects. Real craft still matters and audiences, whether they realize it or not, can feel the difference.

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Some computer tasks are much more effectively performed physically rather than using on-screen controls. This is especially true for creative software, and the Logitech MX Creative Console is a two-part control console designed for use with photo, video, and digital art software, as well as office applications and many others.

If the MX Console looks somewhat familiar, it's because Logitech acquired Loupedeck in 2023. Logitech has been a major player in the input device market for many years, and the MX Master series includes the Creative Console. Given its intended use and functionality, the MX Console competes directly with the TourBox control consoles.

This tactile controller looks neat on the desk, and being made up of two parts means you can arrange the MX Console in a way that works for you. The Keypad is wired, via USB-C, while the Dialpad connects to your computer using Bluetooth. It’s a little strange in some ways and makes sense in others, but we’ll delve into this later.

What I particularly like about the MX Console is that, like the old Loupedeck models, the Keypad buttons are essentially mini screens. These show the assigned action depending on the profiles you have installed and the software you’re using. The Dialpad features blank controls, but with only four buttons, a large dial and a scroll wheel, it’s not a complicated device.

Logitech MX Creative Console: Specifications

Logitech MX Creative Console: Price

The Logitech MX Creative Console is available in two colour options: Pale Grey and Graphite. Pale Grey is so light that it looks almost white when viewed on the Logitech website, while Graphite is exactly the tone you’d expect. The MX Console can be purchased from multiple retailers, including the Logitech website.

With a price of $200 / £200 / AU$350, the MX Console is attractively priced compared to the main competitors, which are the TourBox Neo, Elite and Elite Plus. The main difference between these devices is that the nine main buttons on the MX Console Keypad are mini-LCD screens to show the assigned functions while the TourBox models feature completely blank controls with optional onscreen HUDs to show what everything does.

Logitech MX Creative Console: Design & Handling

The MX Console is built and designed to the high standard you’d expect from Logitech, particularly for its MX Master series of peripherals. The device consists of two main parts, which are the Dialpad and the Keypad. There is also a stand that holds the Keypad at a 45-degree angle, so you can use the Keypad with or without this depending on your preference.

The two main parts of the MX Console are a comfortable size for use and require little desk space at 3.62x3.69x1.33in / 92.1x93.7x33.8mm for the Dialpad and 3.61x3.06x1.00in / 91.7x77.9x25.5mm for the keypad. The Dialpad weighs 4.52oz / 128g, while the Keypad weighs 3.39oz / 96g. Both parts sit on the desk well, thanks to the rubber bars on the bottom to reduce slipping, but a heavier weight would hold both parts in position more effectively.

The Keypad can be laid flat or held on the stand and is connected via USB-C. Frustratingly, a USB-A adaptor isn’t included, so you’ll have to purchase one separately if you require this type of connection. The Dialpad connects via Bluetooth and is powered by two AAA batteries. I wonder if it would have been possible to connect the two parts of the MX Console with a short USB-C cable with computer connection over Bluetooth.

Perhaps, the reason for the chosen approach to connection is that the Keypad features nine backlit buttons that show the assigned function, which is fantastic because you know exactly what you’re pressing. These would likely eat through batteries. There are two other buttons for scrolling between pages of button controls, plus you can assign up to 15 keypad pages per app. This is probably overkill for many, but it does illustrate the personalisation potential of the MX Console.

The Dialpad, on the other hand, features blank controls with four buttons, a large aluminium dial with pleasing resistance and a wide aluminium scroll wheel. The default resistance/speed is set to 50%, and this can be adjusted in the Logi Options+ software. The Dialpad is the analogue controller that provides tactile and precise control of software and operating system functions that work well with a physical input device of this type. The Keypad is used for shortcut-type functions.

The MX Console is driven by the Logi Options+ software, which is easy to use and allows you to download the software profiles you need from the Logi Marketplace. You can also customise existing profiles, create new profiles based on compatible software or create them from scratch, although this last option is time-consuming. The software is generally intuitive and easy to use, and using existing profiles with customisation when preferred is a great way to work.

I found that some of the profile defaults, mostly in terms of the dial and scroll wheel functionality, weren’t set up logically and required customisation. For example, in Photoshop, the dial is set by default to scroll through the Layers panel, which is completely pointless in my opinion as an advanced Photoshop user. This can be changed, but I couldn’t find Brush size in the options available, and this would be a more useful function assignment for the dial.

Another issue that I have here is that the dial isn’t dynamic, and by this I mean it doesn’t change according to what you’re doing or where the mouse pointer sits within the user interface. I created a Levels Adjustment Layer and hovered the mouse pointer over the midtone slider, but the dial still scrolled through the Layers. Having this kind of dynamic functionality and more options for dial functions would greatly improve the MX Console.

Logitech MX Creative Console: Performance

The MX Console is easy to set up and comfortable to use, while the two-part design allows you to arrange it on your desk however you prefer. The nine backlit buttons are customisable in terms of brightness and the information they show. Plus, you can also change the icon colour and text alongside the text size of the label. I prefer to get on with work rather than mess around with icons and text, but maybe that’s just me.

The main application list includes profiles for Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Lightroom Classic, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Audition, Adobe Illustrator, Final Cut Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Figma, Affinity Photo, Zoom, Spotify, Microsoft Teams and others. Profiles can be downloaded from the Logi Marketplace, so the MX Console is compatible with different software options.

At the time of writing, some of these software profiles are only available in the Beta version of Logi Options+, with delivery of the stable release of the software coming soon.

What I like about the MX console is that when in unsupported software or one where a profile hasn’t been downloaded, you have access to operating system control including page scrolling, sound control and screengrabs etc. It’s certainly no work of genius, but it’s undeniably useful and makes the MX Console useful in some way at all times.

This is one of those devices that does the job it’s intended to do and does it well. The Keypad screens differentiate it from TourBox models that use onscreen HUDs to show what the blank controls do, while the TourMenu shows onscreen menus for quick and easy access to software-based functions. This helps to keep the user’s eyes on the screen and not on the device.

The MX Console does have the Action Ring, which is accessed using the assigned Action Ring button on the Dialpad and opens a circular onscreen menu for the software profile in use. This can be customised, or you can stick with the defaults. Furthermore, the MX Console recognises when you switch software and adjusts accordingly to deliver the control available for that software.

Logitech MX Creative Console: Verdict

The Logitech MX Creative Console is a slick and tactile input device that provides precise control within a wide range of software, including creative and office applications. Build quality is excellent, and the unique two-part design makes sense in several ways. The Keypad features nine LCD buttons that show the assigned functions in different software, which is incredibly useful, and the MX Console is also reasonably priced.

There are some quirks to the MX Console, and some of the profiles don’t always make sense in terms of the control assignment. You can, however, customise all of the controls, although some functionality does appear to be missing. Hopefully, future software updates will address these minor shortcomings to deliver improvements to an already impressive device.

Alternatives

The TourBox Lite, as the name suggests, is the most basic TourBox model available and, as such, comes in at an attractive price. It’s certainly not as fully featured as the more expensive models, but for many photographers, videographers and digital artists, it may be all that you need in terms of a tactile and precise physical controller for your favourite creative software.

The Lite sits at the beginner end of the TourBox stable, below the Neo, the Elite and the Elite Plus. The latter three are identical in layout, but the Elite and Elite Plus include additional features and functionality. To keep things simple and on track with the Lite, these other models have an additional control wheel and several extra buttons for assigning functions.

I’ve recently used and reviewed the TourBox Elite, so I know what to expect from the higher-end model, but I was also impressed with the performance of the Lite despite having fewer controls. It is undoubtedly a TourBox based purely on the design, excluding the TourBox logo on the top of the device, and one that potentially appears less daunting thanks to fewer controls.

Despite the significantly lower cost of the Lite, it’s still extremely well made and has a good weight that helps to keep it firmly in position without sliding around the desk. It can also be used with the same impressive software list as the more expensive models, making it an enticing control console for those on a budget.

TourBox Lite: Specifications

TourBox Lite: Price

The TourBox Lite is the most affordable TourBox model available and can be purchased from the TourBox website, Amazon and other retailers for $95 / £95 / AU$149 for the standalone device. If you intend to travel with the Lite and use it in different locations, you can add the handy carry case, which increases the cost slightly to $113 / £113 / AU$179.

The Lite is the entry-level model and comes in at an extremely attractive price, especially compared to the more advanced models. It offers fewer controls than these, and is only available in black, but the controls available will be enough for many people. Of course, more advanced photographers, videographers and digital artists could undoubtedly benefit from investing in the more expensive Neo, Elite or Elite Plus models, but the Lite can still do a great job.

TourBox Lite: Design & Handling

The TourBox Lite is slightly smaller and lighter than the more expensive models at 4.37x4.17x1.54in / 111x106x39mm with a weight of 11.61oz / 329g. It’s only slightly smaller and lighter, so it still sits firmly on your desk and doesn’t move too easily.

Build quality is also excellent, although the plastic body doesn’t feature the same UV antibacterial and fingerprint-resistant coating as the Elite and Elite Plus. Still, the matt finish doesn’t seem to pick up fingerprints, which is great.

The Lite comes packaged with a high-quality braided USB-C cable with a USB-A adaptor attached. This offers backwards compatibility to USB 2.0, so the device can be used with older computers and those that don’t have USB-C or no spare USB-C ports. Once connected, the TourBox Console software immediately recognises the device.

Although the more advanced models are no more difficult to use than the Lite, I do like the apparent simplicity of the device. And despite having fewer buttons, you can assign functions to button combinations, providing greater flexibility than you might expect simply looking at what’s on offer. Of course, the more advanced models also offer this functionality.

The controls available include one knob, one dial and eight buttons. There are only six standalone buttons, although the knob and dial both feature a button press so you can assign functions to these actions if you wish, hence saying there are two extra buttons. Also, there’s no D-pad on the Lite, which consists of four buttons on the other models.

For me, the lack of the wheel compared to the more expensive models did naturally reduce the amount of control available, but the knob and dial were more than adequate when editing video in Davinci Resolve, for example.

In true TourBox style, all of the controls on the Lite are blank since the device can be used with any software. The Presets available by default only cover a healthy list of programs, while the user-created presets cover an even greater number. With the blank controls, you can have the General HUD overlay active, which is a list of the control/function assignments, so you can see what everything does at a glance.

TourBox Lite: Performance

The Lite can’t be faulted in terms of performance, and it undoubtedly achieves its aim of speeding up creative workflows with tactile control. Like all TourBox models, there is a small learning curve to using the device because you’re trading some keyboard shortcuts and interface controls for physical controls. However, like anything, the more you use it, the more intuitive and natural it becomes.

Having used the TourBox Elite immediately before the Lite, I became accustomed to and enjoyed the haptic feedback available with the wheel, dial, and knob. Since the Lite is the most basic and least expensive model available, this feature is unsurprisingly not included, and I did miss it. It certainly doesn’t reduce the effectiveness of the device, it’s just a nice feature to have if available. However, at the competitive price of the Lite, this certainly isn’t an issue.

The Lite is controlled by the TourBox Console software, where there are built-in presets for use with various software programs. These can be customised, you can create your own and download user-created presets from the TourBox website. Presets are the assignment of shortcuts, macros and mouse actions to the TourBox’s physical controls.

Further to the physical controls is the TourMenu, which consists of several menu options within the TourBox software, specifically for programs that open on-screen software control options. These can provide fast access to useful controls and help to keep your attention focused on the screen rather than having to look down at your keyboard or the TourBox.

This next feature can be switched off, but it’s incredibly useful, so taking advantage of it makes a huge amount of sense. This is that the TourBox Console auto-switches between software, so you can immediately begin using the device across software without manual intervention. I tested this with several programs open at the same time and seamlessly switched between them while using the TourBox.

TourBox Lite: Verdict

The TourBox Lite may be an entry-level model, but it provides solid performance for a highly affordable and attractive price. It’s a wired device, but the USB-C cable comes with a USB-A adaptor so you don’t have to worry about buying one if you have no spare USB-C ports. Having fewer physical controls when compared to the more advanced models is noticeable, but the Lite still provides precise tactile control of creative software.

The TourBox Console software is easy to use, and creating custom presets couldn’t be simpler. I also enjoy the auto-switching between software programs because I didn’t have to break out of my workflow to switch manually. I did miss the haptic feedback of the Elite and Elite Plus models, but for the price of the Lite, you can’t go wrong.

Alternatives

Tactile controller consoles for photographers, videographers and digital artists have been around for a long time and remain as popular as ever. The TourBox Elite is a premium controller that allows for precise adjustments of a wide range of controls within creative software. You can work with existing software presets, download user-created presets and/or create your own.

TourBox has been around for a number of years, with the first TourBox model released in 2018. Since then, the company has grown, and the models available include the Lite, Neo and Elite Plus. The Elite Plus is the same as the Elite except for also providing iPad support alongside working with computers for creatives who use iPads for their creative work.

The TourBox Eilte is a simple controller that can be connected to your computer wirelessly via Bluetooth while being powered by two AA batteries, or it can be connected and powered with a USB-C cable. The TourBox Console software is incredibly easy to use and makes setting up and using the device incredibly easy and efficient.

I’ve used a wide range of control consoles and what I like about this one is that although it’s not cheap, it can be used with many software programs. Plus, although the buttons, wheels and dials are blank on the device, you can choose to have HUD overlays showing the controls on your screen to help.

TourBox Elite: Specifications

TourBox Elite: Price

The TourBox Elite can be purchased directly from the TourBox website, Amazon and other retailers. It’s also available in three colours: Classic Black, Ivory White and Modern Smoke-Black Translucent.

The Elite costs $239 / £241 / AU$386 for the standalone device, or you can add a USB-C cable and a carry case for $269 / £271 / AU$436. The optional carry case is a great accessory if you plan to use the TourBox in different locations.

This is quite expensive when you compare it to the TourBox Neo. The Neo is extremely similar to the Elite with the same control layout and many of the same features. However, the Elite has an upgraded chip, features haptic feedback on the wheels and dial and can be connected to computers via Bluetooth or USB-C, while the Neo is cable only.

TourBox Elite: Design & Handling

The TourBox Elite is an unintrusive device on your desk that’s just the right size to not look and feel overcrowded, with enough space between the controls to be able to differentiate between them without looking. None of these have labels, which makes sense because the device can be used with different software rather than being tied to one. This list of compatible software Presets is impressively long and, the Elite can be used with any software when you create custom Presets.

The Elite is 4.57x3.98x1.73in / 116x101x44mm so it’s compact despite the number of controls available. It weighs 13.26oz / 376g without batteries, so it sits solidly on your desk and has a pleasing weight when held. Batteries are claimed to last up to two months depending on the haptic feedback setting used and whether or not you switch it off after use, although it does enter a sleep mode when not in use.

The build quality of the Elite is excellent, and the controls feel robust, as does the overall design. The review model was the Modern Smoke-Black Translucent, so you can just about see through the device body to the electronics beneath without being distracted by the internals of the device.

The Classic Black option looks great, too, although I would worry that the Ivory White version would pick up dirt. Saying that, TourBox claims that the Elite features a UV antibacterial and fingerprint-resistant coating, and the test model certainly didn’t pick up fingerprints, so that part is certainly true.

Going back to the controls available, these include one wheel, one knob, one dial and 14 buttons. Three of these aren’t strictly buttons, but are the wheel, knob and dial. I’ve included these as buttons since they also have a button press that can be assigned functions. Four of the buttons also make up a D-pad.

Since the buttons are blank, you may be wondering how you know what function has been applied to each control across the different creative software programs you use. This is achieved either by memory, which would come into effect over time, but you can also opt to have HUD overlays active. This shows what every button is assigned to do and is visible on-screen. It is, as you’d expect, extremely useful.

TourBox Elite: Performance

The Elite works extremely well, although it cannot be denied that you have to get used to it before you can fully appreciate the tactile and precise control it offers. Also, if you’re someone who uses keyboard shortcuts, this can add to the time it takes to build familiarity, although the TourBox and shortcuts go hand-in-hand. You can, of course, build a workflow that works for you and using the TourBox alongside keyboard shortcuts worked well for me.

One feature that does make a difference to the user experience is haptic feedback on the wheel, knob, and dial. This undoubtedly adds to the analogue feel of the device, and there are two levels of intensity available, as well as the option to switch it off. It certainly makes these controls feel more mechanical, although the clicking sound produced is a little annoying. It does, however, become less noticeable over time.

The device is essentially controlled by the TourBox Console software, which is incredibly intuitive and easy to use. Within this, there are presets for different software already available; you can create your own based on specific software, start with a blank preset and also download user-created presets from the TourBox website. presets are the configuration of the device in terms of function assignment.

Functions that can be assigned to controls include shortcuts, macros and mouse actions. One useful function that can also be assigned is the TourMenu, which is made up of several menu options within the TourBox software that open on-screen software control options. These can provide extremely fast access to the controls you want and need.

An aspect of the TourBox Console that’s a little confusing at first is that the wheel, dial and knob speed and haptic feedback strength controls are found within the presets rather than the global settings menu. When these two settings are adjusted in a single software preset, they are indeed applied globally to all other presets.

TourBox Console also auto-switches between software, which is fantastic because it works well and maintains a more streamlined workflow when using multiple creative programs. You can switch this functionality off, but why would you?

What would be useful is a general preset created by TourBox that controls operating system functions and Office software when not using creative software. You can, however, create your own custom preset to cover these kinds of functions and download user-created presets for them.

TourBox Elite: Verdict

The TourBox Elite is one of the two higher-end TourBox models offering excellent build quality alongside a pleasant weight that keeps the device firmly in position. Bluetooth connectivity keeps your desk cable-free unless you decide to connect and power via USB-C, while the haptic feedback and great software make it a pleasure to use. The main downsides are that it’s not cheap and there’s no built-in operating system preset for general computer use.

The device is designed for use without having to look at it, and this can be achieved thanks to the different-sized and shaped buttons and controls. What’s more, the optional on-screen HUDs outline what function each button is programmed to perform. You can also adjust existing presets or create your own for a more personalised experience, which is useful.

Alternatives

The ‘Big N’ has slipped out a snippet of news that you might have missed, what with the fanfare surrounding today’s big news that the Nikon Z5 II has arrived. But if you’re a Nikon videographer, the announcement that Adobe Premiere Pro will finally support the legendary manufacturer’s proprietary N-RAW video format will be the bigger revelation, with planned implementation by the end of this year.

N-RAW’s lack of support via the industry standard editing software has arguably held Nikon’s huge charge into the video sphere over the past few years back a bit, with users forced to use another codec or swap to compatible software such as DaVinci Resolve. And with Nikon’s latest top-tier cameras like the Nikon Z6 III, Nikon Z8, and Nikon Z9, boasting formidable video specs, it’s entirely possible that N-RAW’s compatibility issues have prevented some creatives from introducing these powerful cameras into their video setup.

N-RAW is a 12-bit RAW video codec (which supports Rec. 2020 color gamut) that’s designed to deliver high quality footage, while minimizing file sizes, it’ll deliver smaller file sizes than Nikon users’ other Raw option, Apple ProRes RAW, making it a useful format for videographers who require top-notch video footage and want to save more space. That said, any Raw video file is going to be big, so the vast majority of Nikon videographers will still stick with H.265 (HEVC) or 10-bit ProRes most of the time.

Still, this is a huge deal for Raw video shooters and following Nikon’s much-talked-about acquisition of RED, it’s yet another boost to the ‘Big N’s’ rep as a serious video contender. Nikon has made no secret that RED is the reason why Adobe Premiere Pro N-RAW support will exist, thanks to it gaining access to the cinema camera giant's R3D software development kit.

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Blackmagic Design has released The Beginner’s Guide to DaVinci Resolve 19, a free, step-by-step training guide aimed at both new and experienced users of the powerful DaVinci Resolve video editing software. This comprehensive guide walks users through the industry-standard tools available in DaVinci Resolve, covering everything from video editing and color grading to audio enhancement and visual effects.

The release of this free resource comes at a time when more filmmakers and video editors are shifting away from costly subscription-based software like Adobe Premiere Pro in favor of DaVinci Resolve’s free software, or the one-time purchase model and industry-leading features of DaVinci Resolve Studio. With this new guide, Blackmagic Design is making it easier than ever for creators to learn and master its software without additional financial barriers.

The guide takes a project-based approach to learning, enabling users to work through real-world examples while gaining hands-on experience with DaVinci Resolve’s tools. Lessons include editing techniques, normalizing audio levels, adding effects, automatically mixing music, color correction fundamentals, and advanced grading techniques.

Users will also learn how to create Power Windows, track objects, apply ResolveFX, organize projects with proxy files, sync and manage audio, enhance audio with the Fairlight page, and build custom titles and visual effects with the Fusion page. The guide also covers project delivery in various formats, including optimized settings for social media platforms.

As filmmakers seek cost-effective and high-performance alternatives to Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite, DaVinci Resolve has emerged as a top contender. Known for its powerful color grading tools, seamless editing workflow, and professional-level audio features, it has become a go-to solution for many independent creators and production studios alike. The addition of a comprehensive, freely available guide only strengthens its appeal, making the transition from other platforms smoother for new users.

For those considering making the switch to DaVinci Resolve or simply looking to refine their skills, The Beginner’s Guide to DaVinci Resolve 19 is a valuable resource. The book is available for free on Blackmagic Design’s official website, providing accessible, high-quality training to a growing community of DaVinci Resolve users.

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The leap from photography to documentary filmmaking is one I’ve been thinking about a lot as I venture into filmmaking myself. It’s a bit daunting, and I’ve been feeling apprehensive about getting started. So, when I attended the WildPhotos event last year and heard Evgenia Arbugaeva speak about her own transition from photographer to filmmaker, it was the inspiration I needed.

Arbugaeva, known for her striking images of remote landscapes and intimate portrayals of human connections to nature, made her directorial debut in 2022 with Haulout; a 25-minute documentary about the migration of walruses in the Arctic.

The film is both visually stunning and deeply poignant, offering a powerful narrative about climate change and the fragility of the natural world. What resonated with me most was how Arbugaeva’s background as a photographer influenced her filmmaking approach, making the film feel as intimate, tense and thoughtfully composed as her still work.

"It was my first experience, I had never shot video before," she said at WildPhotos. "We didn't have any funding or support and I thought maybe this was for the better because it would allow me complete creative freedom and no pressure to deliver, and I can learn as I go".

ABOVE: Watch the short documentary film Haulout

Her shift from stills to film felt natural, as her photographic approach translated seamlessly into the moving image. Haulout's pacing is measured, allowing its breathtaking Arctic landscapes and the raw power of the walruses to speak for themselves. Each frame feels carefully composed, with the same attention to light, composition, and mood that defines Arbugaeva's photography. It’s as though you’re viewing a series of stills brought to life.

At the WildPhotos event, Arbugaeva shared how her experience as a photographer in harsh environments prepared her for filmmaking. She spoke about the technical challenges she faced, including working with a small crew and the Arctic’s extreme conditions, while also revealing that she worked alongside her brother, Max Arbugaeva – a key part of the project's success. Their collaboration brought a personal dimension to making the film, strengthening its authenticity and emotional impact.

"My work is very still and measured, and I feel like I approached it like photography, and Max's camera is more dynamic and he also used drones to capture the scale of the haulout. I really enjoyed the collaborative element of filmmaking".

Arbugaeva’s technical choices also reflect her photographic background. She used a Canon EOS R5, an instrument she was familiar with from her photography, enabling her to focus on creative choices without being distracted by new equipment. Her ability to blend wide, sweeping shots with intimate close-ups shows a talent for visual storytelling, capturing the rawness of the Arctic and the lonely yet scary job of the conservationist, with a photographer’s eye.

The film’s sound design also reflects her understanding of creating an atmosphere. The ambient sounds – the wind, the sea, the calls of the walruses – immerse you in the environment, complementing the visuals and adding layers of emotional depth. It’s a great reminder that as photographers, we have the tools to build atmosphere and mood, even in a different medium.

Haulout is available in full and for free on The New Yorker’s YouTube channel, and watching it has been a reaffirming experience as I move into filmmaking myself. The documentary doesn’t just highlight the climate crisis, it demonstrates how the skills honed as a photographer can be powerfully applied in filmmaking.

Arbugaeva’s journey has given me the confidence to continue exploring filmmaking, knowing that my photographic visual language is an asset, not a limitation.

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Check out our guides to the best camera for filmmaking and the best hybrid cameras. WildPhotos organizer Wildscreen will host another event next month looking at the Science in Storytelling, another must for wildlife filmmakers.

When I came across YouTuber Alucinor Productions’ video, “Is Digital Color Grading Destroying Modern Movies?”, it felt like unearthing some kind of revelation. I instantly knew what the video was going to be about, because it’s a subject that’s sat in my movie-minded subconscious for years.

I know plenty of casual moviegoers who flat-out refuse to watch older movies. And while there are a multitude of reasons why older films may feel different to modern productions – such as jankier CGI, slower pacing, simpler transitions, lighting and much more – one of the biggest differences between then and now, which probably doesn’t get mentioned enough, is color grading.

ABOVE: Watch the video and see if you agree

The concept of color grading isn’t new. Various color-altering methods were used prior to digital filmmaking, such as the bleach bypass technique – which would reduce or remove the film bleaching process to desaturate the footage – famously used to achieve Saving Private Ryan’s iconic aesthetic.

But when digital filmmaking came along, it made the process of color grading cheaper and easier, while dramatically increasing the filmmaker’s possibilities. The problem is, it’s used so often and to such an extent that it can arguably hamper the viewing experience and therefore the story being told.

It seems like every film and television show that comes out nowadays is color-graded to the Nth degree. Alucinor Productions’ video (above) uses a jarring scene in Brad Pitt’s World War Z as a case study to illustrate this point. As he puts it so succinctly: “For audiences to psychologically buy in, the grade must at the very least be tonally consistent with the material.”

And to prove that extreme color grading can also be used to great effect, he cites Mad Max: Fury Road’s saturated blue skies and warm yellow hues as benefitting the film's crazed nature.

Personally, my favorite example of extreme color grading done right is Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water. This film, about a romance between a woman and an underwater creature, trapped in a government laboratory, has a very distinctive murky blue and green grade. It’s clearly meant to simulate being underwater. And when paired with a very unconventional love story, the unconventional grade works well.

But Alucinor Productions’ point is that many movies are graded without such attention to detail, almost for the sake of it. He uses Jurassic World as an example, showing a behind-the-scenes clip of a muddy, brown river that looks teal in the final edit. The difference is not only striking, but a world away from the realism of the colors portrayed in the Steven Spielberg original.

And it’s older films like Jurassic Park where the YouTuber wonders whether the filmmakers of today could learn a thing or two. And I certainly agree with his point that, in the right film, a more realistic color grade can help to immerse audiences, while an extreme grade can pull them from that immersion.

Make sure you watch the video for all of Alucinor Productions’ thoughts on color grading and the many examples he draws from. I really think he’s hit upon something we need to pull from our subconscious and talk about more.

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If you're interested in video editing, make sure you check out the best video editing software. Want to learn about serious filmmaking cameras? Check out the best cinema cameras. And if you'd like more film-related opinions Nosferatu has the best cinematography I’ve seen in a long time.

I watched Robert Eggers and Jarin Blaschke’s latest movie Nosferatu last weekend, a remake of 1920s silent movie Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, which itself was an adaption of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, published barely two decades prior. And I have to say, it’s one of the most visually arresting films I’ve seen in a long time.

I’m certain you could pause the movie at any given juncture and you’d be left with a portfolio-worthy film still. In a world where moviegoers are raised on a diet of vibrant, HDR-infused Marvel flicks (which I do still enjoy), Nosferatu’s use of focus, lighting, composition, and even its unconventional (in modern cinema) 5:3 aspect ratio, is a welcome change of pace. Scenes are slow and minimalist in comparison to the dopamine-rich speed and detail of modern blockbusters.

Nosferatu’s imagery doesn’t spoon-feed its audience. It’s happy to conceal large portions of the screen in total darkness, displaying excellent use of negative space and not shying away from simple, yet effective, compositions.

Panavision has released an excellent video interview (above) with Jarin Blaschke, where he discusses the film's use of composition. Nosferatu is set in 1838 and the filmmakers were heavily influenced by the romanticism art of the day, “if anyone saw any art, it would've been in paintings, not photographs. So what was the style of painting at the time? Hands down, romanticism.” says Jarin.

The filmmakers’ inspiration is evident in the film’s abundance of shadow, direct lighting, and desaturated color palette. In the same video, Jarin also talks about the use of symmetry: “I think Rob just likes classical composition anyway, so we're always kind of putting things out in a very simple symmetrical way. If you really push the symmetry, it can get oppressive, which isn't right for everything. But I think in a horror movie you can lean into that and make it work.”

A particularly inspiring part of the video is when Jarin shows his extensive storyboarding for each camera angle. I think photographers could learn a lot from this. Storyboarding is extremely common in filmmaking, but I feel it’s unusual (not unheard of) for photographers to plan out compositions like this.

He also talks about how they used Panavision lenses to produce the haunting visuals of Nosferatu. The film is currently in cinemas and has been nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Cinematography. I’m certainly not surprised.

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As an avid movie lover, I am obsessed with the YouTube series on the Criterion Channel – titled Closet Picks – where actors and filmmakers enter a closet filled with the entire Criterion collection of films and choose their favorites. This almost always results in incredible recommendations and an explanation as to why the films they’ve chosen are must-sees.

This happened on the episode with legendary cinematographer and photographer, Sir Roger Deakins, and collaborator, James Deakins, who recommended the 1967 movie In Cold Blood. Originally a true crime novel by Truman Capote, the film is based around two criminals who hatch a plan to rob a wealthy Kansas family, only for the plan to go awry and the men to go on the run.

The film is fascinating, but it isn’t the subject matter that stole my attention – it was the incredible cinematography by Conrad Hall.

ABOVE: Watch Deakins' Criterion collection picks

For those unaware, Sir Roger Deakins is one of the greatest cinematographers of all time, responsible for the look and feel of cinematic masterpieces such as No Country For Old Men, 1917, and The Assassination of Jesse James. On top of his cinematography, he recently released his first photography book Byways, which in itself is an inspiration. So, any recommendations from him are something I had to investigate further – and I’m glad I did!

In Cold Blood is the epitome of black-and-white cinematography, and I highly recommend it to anyone who has an affinity for shooting black-and-white video or photography. Each frame could be a beautiful still image in itself, with incredible compositions and an extremely refined use of light and shadow. There is a lot to be learned from analyzing this movie's technical brilliance.

Don’t just take my word for it – Deakins states in the video, "Not only a great film but for me, probably the best black-and-white cinematography I've ever seen by Conrad Hall… some of the best transitions.

"Also, the cinematography is wonderful because he shoots the desert landscape as you've never seen it before, but he also shoots the murder and the darkness, and the flashlights – and the tension of that and the horror of it in just an amazing way. If anyone wants to watch one movie for cinematography, to understand what cinematography is, it would be In Cold Blood."

Watching In Cold Blood with a fresh perspective, informed by Deakins' praise, changed the way I approach lighting, framing and texture in my own photography. It’s a reminder that great cinematography isn’t just about technical proficiency – it’s about creating an emotional and visceral experience that draws the viewer into the world of the film.

Conrad Hall’s work on In Cold Blood shows us the power of restraint, the art of subtlety, and how the smallest details can elevate an entire narrative. As Deakins suggests, it’s a masterclass in storytelling through visuals.

For anyone looking to deepen their understanding of cinematography or simply appreciate the sheer artistry behind black-and-white imagery, this film is a must-see. In Cold Blood continues to shape how we think about cinematography, and as Deakins’ words so clearly illustrate, it remains one of the finest examples of visual storytelling in cinema history.

I highly recommend checking out the Closet Picks series on YouTube. There's also the Criterion Channel, offering a curated collection of films, exclusive premieres and a vault worth of extras including audio commentaries, interviews and supplemental material. It’s a treasure trove of cinematic gems. You never know what might inspire your next creative breakthrough!

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Watch video: Miniature marvels

Warhammer was – for me – something my little brother used to do when we were kids in the ’80s. But a few months ago my 11-year-old son got into it. Now the house is littered with paints, brushes, plastic sprues and all manner of lovingly crafted miniature figures. I wanted to get involved, but the dice-throwing was all beyond me.

Whether you’re interested in capturing miniature scenes like this or any similar close-up photography (perhaps Lego or toy soldiers), you’ll find a host of tips and tricks to try over the following pages. These figures are painstakingly painted by hand, a process that often takes days or weeks. So to do them justice we need to take a similarly in-depth approach to our photography.

It starts with the composition. This is where we can get really creative, placing figures around the frame, experimenting with angles, using different levels to fill the upper parts of the scene, adding details like rocks or moss. Then there’s the lighting, which gives you a chance to unleash your inner cinematographer. Just like an action shot from your favourite film, you can choose where to place your lights, add special effects to enhance the mood, experiment with different coloured lighting and even include little lights in the scene.

The challenge with close-up photography like this is often the depth of field. We don’t want a shallow-focus effect here, as it spoils the illusion. Instead, we need plenty of depth of field to ensure several figures come out sharp. Often the only way to achieve this is to shoot for a focus stack over several frames. We’ll explain how to do so here, and then combine the sharp parts from each for a single super-detailed frame. Let’s get to it! 

1. Compose the figures

The great fun in this project is in posing the figures to create a pleasing diorama. Whether you’re using Warhammer figures or any kind of miniature, small adjustments can make a big difference to the frame. As a general rule of thumb, aim to give each figure its own personal space and avoid too much overlapping.

2. Use a macro lens

A macro lens isn’t essential but it gives you greater freedom to focus at close distances. The depth of field will be very limited – even if we use a narrow aperture – so consider a focus stack, where we shoot a series of frames while adjusting the focus point. Begin by focusing on the closest point and composing the shot.

3. Use automatic stacking

Focus stacking can be done manually by making tiny shifts to the manual focus ring. But many new Canon EOS cameras have a dedicated focus bracketing mode that automates the process. We can set the number of shots and adjust the increment between each. The right settings will depend on your scene.

4. Camera settings

If you’re shooting for a focus stack then you need the exposure to stay consistent. It’s also best to use a mid-range aperture for max sharpness, as this is around the lens ‘sweet spot’ Set to the dial to Manual mode, use aperture f/11, ISO100, then adjust the shutter speed until the scene brightness looks right.

5. Add atmosphere with smoke

Mist, fog and smoke are used all the time in cinematic shots to add atmosphere and create separation between objects in a scene. A simple way to do this with our miniature scene is to use an incense stick, or use a dedicated smoke machine.

6. Control the depth

When it comes to shooting for a focus stack you don’t necessarily need the entire scene in-focus. In fact, it can add to the mood if you keep parts of the backdrop soft. Of course, when it comes to combining the focus-stacked shots you can simply use less frames to exclude the sharper background.

7. Merge a focus stack

If you’ve shot for a focus stack then combining the sharp parts from each frame is an easy task. In Affinity Photo, go to File > New Focus Merge and load the set of images. You could also try a dedicated focus stacker like Helicon Focus, which will give you more options.

8. Add light flashes

To add flashes of light or laser fire, find a suitable photo of bright flashes on a dark backdrop, open it into Affinity Photo or Photoshop, use the lasso to roughly select it, copy and paste it into your image and set the Blend Mode to Lighten or Screen. Paint a layer mask to tidy the edges.

9. Tidy the paintwork

Painting figures is fun, but also tricky. Viewed close up you might find some of the paintwork is a little shoddy, but it’s easy to fix. In Affinity Photo make a new layer, grab the Inpainting tool and set it to ‘Current and Below’ then paint to remove marks. Use it to tidy stray hairs and dust too.

10. Create pools of light

Skilled miniature painters can paint ‘object source lighting’ to create the illusion of a light source that isn’t there. We can use editing tricks to do something similar. In cinematography you’ll often hear the term ‘practicals’. These are lights in the frame that help to add illumination, like a table lamp.

We can add practicals to our miniature scenes, but we have the freedom to combine photos afterwards to create special effects. Here we used a small candle to create a pool of light in the scene that reflects off the surrounding figures.

We shot for a focus stack with the candle, then removed it and shot another stack without it. Next we combined the two stacks into one photo using a layer mask in Affinity Photo. Finally, we made a new layer and painted with the brush tool to create lights on the weapon, then used an Outer Glow effect to make the lights glow.

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From the rugged landscape of County Fermanagh to the film sets of The Martian, The Banshees of Inisherin and now, the new blockbuster Gladiator II, photographer Aidan Monaghan knows how to capture the perfect shot.

He took the official photographs for the hotly-anticipated sequel to Gladiator that now adorn billboards, magazine pages and posters across the globe.

The film, starring Denzel Washington and Paul Mescal, premiered in London, England on Wednesday, and has already been hailed as a visual spectacle.

Monaghan has been a stills photographer for over 15 years. He recently spoke to BBC News NI, explaining that working on the official stills for a huge production involves “capturing the essence of the actual movie that sells it to the public,” including set photos, as well as character portraits.

“No words can really describe it,” he said about his fourth time working with director Ridley Scott.

Talking about seeing his work on such a colossal scale, Monaghan said it was “surreal”.

The photographer has also spoken about how he was influenced in his career by former Irish News editor, Ann McManus, who hails from the same small Northern Irish village of Ederney.

McManus started with the Irish News in 1984, leaving in 2020, and has won multiple awards for her work, in both news and sports photography.

According to the Irish News, McManus is known for her Gaelic football shots – which were at the forefront of Monaghan’s mind as he captured the gladiatorial battle shots.

Speaking of one of his favorite shots of Mescal and fellow actor Pedro Pascal fighting (below), he said, “It’s one of those images that you either get or you don’t get. It’s a split second… you blink and you’ve missed it. It goes back to the kind of fantastic sports photography shots like Ann McManus, who was my mentor, used to take.”

Despite being a lifelong film lover, Monaghan started his career as an architect, helping to design buildings such as The Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich center in West Belfast.

After shooting stills for local theatre companies, he realized that film photography was what he wanted to do. Aidan is due to start work on a new Apple series Death of Robin Hood starring Jodie Cromer.

Gladiator II is playing at cinemas in the UK and Australia now. It opens in the US on November 22. Head to the official website for more info.

Aspire to shooting on-set stills? Take a look at the best mirrorless cameras with a silent shutter. More interested in filming on sets of your own? Check out the best cinema cameras and the best cine lenses.

Despite introducing us to some of the best photo editing software, I can't remember a time when it wasn't hip to hate on Adobe. After all, it's a mega-corporation that could, theoretically, hold the creative industry to ransom with its roster of industry-standard software (unless you're to believe that could all change with Apple's recent acquisition of Pixelmator). But lately – following that messy AI T&Cs debacle – it seems the Adobe naysayers are out in force.

Ask a pool of creatives what they despise most about Adobe, and you can bet your bottom dollar the vast majority will say Creative Cloud's subscription model. And although I'm well aware I'm in the minority, I've always considered it preferable to the old Creative Suite's one-off payments, especially if you can land a juicy Black Friday deal.

I first encountered Adobe software when I studied art and photography at college, circa 2008. Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator lessons were my absolute favorites. I soon conquered the learning curve and found myself digging deeper into the CS4 software as an extracurricular activity. Every chance I got, I was glued to an Apple iMac in my classroom. The problem was, I had to go home at some point…

I consider myself to have had a fortunate upbringing, but my parents certainly couldn't justify spending $199 on Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended Student Edition (nearly $300 today, adjusting for inflation - find out about current Adobe student discounts). Let alone Illustrator…

So, for about a year, I learned how to use Photoshop by day and spent my evenings working out how I did the exact same thing on open-source software GIMP. Eventually, a friend introduced me to a cracked version of CS2, later CS5, but these were buggy and the latter came with a nasty virus…

Once I'd left college there was absolutely no way I could afford Adobe's huge prices. Sure, upgrade prices weren't nearly as bad, but getting a foot on the Adobe ladder was simply unobtainable for me. And I'm guessing, thousands of other fledgling creatives. Eventually, I was able to access Adobe software at work, but even then, I was forced to use CS5, even after the release of CS6. Not the end of the world, but not having access to new features was certainly an annoyance.

Then, in 2011, Adobe launched Creative Cloud. By mid-2013, Creative Suite's tenure had come to an end. There would be no CS7, a Creative Cloud subscription was the only option if you wanted the latest Adobe software. And while many creatives – presumably those paying for significantly cheaper upgrades – lambasted the payment model, I could finally afford Adobe software and would never have to worry about putting down a big lump sum. Best of all, so long as my hardware was up to scratch, it would always be up to date.

This is why I've always preferred the subscription model. It's more accessible for fledgling creatives. I don't think anyone can deny that a big down payment of hundreds of dollars is a huge ask for a student or start-up. Besides, Adobe certainly wasn't the first company to enforce a subscription model and nowadays, subscriptions are the digital norm. Everything from Microsoft's Game Pass to Amazon Prime requires a subscription.

So why all the hate? Well, some people like to own the software they use. And while this is always going to be preferable, it's worth noting that – now physical media is all but extinct when it comes to computing software – you never truly own a digital download. This is something I mention in more detail when discussing the fact that Adobe Photoshop Elements 2025 is no longer yours for life.

I'm sure the main concern is that the subscription model is cumulatively more expensive than the one-off payments of yesteryear. Now, my biggest gripe with Creative Cloud is that the subscription options are unnecessarily complicated. You can subscribe to individual applications, there's a Photography plan, an All Apps plan, you can add Adobe Stock plans, choose to pay an annual lump sum, an annual monthly plan or a monthly plan that you can cancel at any time. There are business models, student models, sales throughout the year, the list goes on and on…

This means that savvier users can end up paying less than others, so long as they choose the right plan and are willing to take out a subscription during a sale period. Heck, some people wait until the renewal period, then threaten to cancel their subscription, only to take advantage of any 'leaving' discounts. It's a bit of a mess. And if you don't navigate it properly, you could end up paying over the odds.

Add in inflation and it's extremely difficult to work out where the subscription model stands in relation to the one-off payments of yesteryear. Regardless, I decided to crunch a few numbers to see if I could draw any conclusions.

The standard all-apps package costs $59.99 / £56.98 per month (if you commit to a year). It's $89.99 / £85.48 if you take out the 'cancel any time, no fee' plan. I'm going to crunch the annual monthly plan, since that's what I think most users will use. Within reason, a new Creative Suite was released every two years. So, 24 months using All Apps totals $1,439.76 / £1,367.52.

Students and teachers get the All Apps plan for $19.99 / £16.24 per month for a year and $34.99 / £28.99 thereafter. That's $239.88 / £194.88 for the first year and $419.88 / £347.88 for the second year, totalling $659.76 / £542.76.

Compare these figures to CS6 one-off prices and the results are pretty interesting. The standard CS6 Master Collection cost $2,599 / £2,223. I could only find reliable US pricing for the Education bundle, $999. Clearly, the subscription model is cheaper. But upgrades muddy the water. Once again, it's very hard to find reliable CS6 pricing nowadays, but a post on the Adobe Community forums reveals that upgrading from the CS5 Master Collection to CS6 cost $1,049. Now, that's less than a yearly Creative Cloud All Apps subscription.

So, let's assume Master Collection upgrades would have continued roughly around that price. If you paid $2,599 for the CS6 Master Collection and every two years you paid $1,049 for the subsequent upgrade, after four years you would have paid $3,648, six years, $4,697, eight years $5,746 and 10 years $6,795. Now for the Creative Cloud All Apps plan. After four years, $2,879.52, after six years, $4,319.28, after eight years, $5,759.04, and 10 years, $7,198.80.

So, take those figures at face value and over a 10-year period Adobe's old model is cheaper. In fact, it's cheaper after eight years and would continue to get comparatively cheaper as the years roll by.

But, this really isn't a fair experiment. I haven't accounted for inflation, I haven't accounted for any Creative Suite discounts or price hikes and I haven't accounted for any Creative Cloud discounts or price hikes. Let's not forget, you can save plenty of money on the latter depending on when you take out your plan and how you choose to maintain it. And of course, I've only compared the Master Collection and All App plans, individual software could turn up different results and Lightroom wasn't even included in the CS6 Master Collection, so there's another important variable.

If I can deduce anything from my laymen's number crunching, it's that we're probably not losing out big time when it comes to Creative Cloud. And of course, Creative Cloud is a smoother experience, with instant updates and access to the cloud.

There is of course a wider discussion about Adobe's dominance within the creative industry and the high fees it's always been able to set when it comes to its software. Then again, it's worth noting that before Adobe came along, retouching was extremely expensive. According to Wikipedia: "When Photoshop 1.0 was released, digital retouching on dedicated high-end systems (...) cost around $300 an hour for basic photo retouching. The list price of Photoshop 1.0 for Macintosh in 1990 was $895."

Huh, maybe that puts things into perspective...

Interested in editing? Check out the best video editing software and the best monitors for photo editing.

If you're a film buff who dreams of capturing cinematic action sequences, then short of hiring an army of actors, set designers, and a practical effects crew – or embarking on a career as a film stills photographer – cinematic toy photography is as close as you're going to get. So when I decided to capture a queen facing off with a fiery dragon, I attached the best macro lens I could find to my camera and turned to everyone's favorite construction toy, Lego. 

I used the Lego Lion Knights' Castle as a backdrop for my fantasy scene, but with a little creativity, you could use any Lego sets or action figures you might have lying around. And while a large set provides you with more freedom, a little creative framing, and out-of-the-box thinking can make even a tiny setup work just as well.

While I used a little bit of Photoshop magic to enhance this image by adding flames coming out of the dragon's mouth and a few embers, the lion's share of the special effects was practical. I used the PMI Gear Smoke Ninja, a portable smoke machine to provide the smoke. While the bokeh, used to simulate flames, is simply scrunched-up pieces of aluminum foil placed very close to the camera, reflecting orange and red lighting from the best LED panels for photography.

The PMI Gear Smoke Ninja

I enhanced my fiery special effects by using the PMI Gear Smoke Ninja. This portable little device is designed for photographers and has three different smoke settings. Its small size and thin nozzle attachment make it ideal for precise toy photography applications. If you have a conventional smoke machine at home, that should work, too. Less is often more, so don't create too much haze as this can hamper image quality.

1. Place foil in the foreground

You can use scrunched-up sheets of aluminum foil to reflect light and create bokeh, simulating flames. Ensure the shiny side is on the outside and position the foil far enough away from the point of focus so it's blurred into attractive discs of bokeh. This means positioning it suitably far into the foreground or background (I did both). A neat trick is to set up a couple of layers of aluminum foil in the foreground to create different-sized discs of bokeh. This will add depth to your fabricated flames. I used a tripod to hold the foil in front of the lens.

• Read more: Common tripod mistakes photographers make 

2. Illuminate the foil to fake fire

I placed key and fill lights on either side of the setup, directed a red LED light onto the foreground foil and a second red LED light (hidden behind the castle) onto the background foil. LED panels are a great choice as they aren't too bright; otherwise, it's easy to flood close-up subjects with too much light. Models such as my Lume Cube RGB Panel Pro 2.0 allow you to emit various colors. If you don't have colored lights, gels will do. And if you have no dedicated lighting, get creative with torches, lamps, and even the red light on a head torch.

3. Dial in your camera settings

Working on a tripod will allow you to carefully refine your composition and leave your hands free to adjust lighting and operate your smoke machine. As such, you don't have to worry too much about your shutter speed, so long as it's fast enough to freeze any plumes of smoke. Keep your ISO low to retain as much image quality as possible. Macro shooters will often select quite a narrow aperture, but I settled on f/8. This provided a generous enough depth of field to render my subjects sharp while providing plenty of blurry bokeh.

4. Focus on your subject 

I used a 90mm macro lens, but any close-focusing lens will do the trick. Unless you're using a modern macro lens like the Nikon Z MC 105mm f/2.8 VR S, you might want to avoid autofocus altogether and focus manually. I placed the dragon and queen on the same focal plane, so they'd both be sharp, even with my macro lens's shallow depth of field. When focusing, zoom into live view to really refine your focus. Even if you're using autofocus, it's still best practice to zoom into live view once it's locked on to check critical focus.

5. Add a little smoke

It can be hard to direct plumes of smoke where you want them. Set off your smoke machine, capture a few images, wait for the smoke to clear, and repeat. Then select four or five images with attractive plumes across the frame and open them in the same Photoshop document. Use the best image as your top layer, then place the image with the plume of smoke you'd like to add on top and add a layer mask. Invert it (Cmd/Ctrl+I) and use a soft, white brush to selectively paint the plumes in. Repeat this process with the other images until happy.

6. Finish with a few embers 

Finish off your fiery scene by adding a few embers in post-production. The easiest way to do this is to visit a royalty-free stock image website such as Pixabay. I used image 3332789. The black background is crucial, because when you've imported it into Photoshop and resized it accordingly, you'll want to change the blending mode to Screen, so the black background disappears. Add a layer mask and use a black brush to paint away the parts of the image you don't want. I used the same process for the fire from the dragon's jaws (4177539).

If you're interested in toy photography, you may also be interested in the best LED light sticks and light wands and the best mirrorless camera. 

With the proliferation of AI-generated imagery and rise of deepfake video, it's becoming increasingly difficult to tell whether footage you're viewing is genuine or not. To combat this, everybody's favorite video-streaming service YouTube is rolling out a new 'Captured with a camera' label that verifies whether an uploaded video was shot on a real camera and contains unaltered footage and sound.

To qualify as 'Captured with a camera' footage, the video must be shot on a device that uses the CP2A authentication standard, which embeds authentication information into the metadata, so what content was shot when and where can be traced.

Digital content authentication service Trupic has produced what it says is the “first authentic video with C2PA Content Credentials on YouTube.” Fittingly, it was recorded at San Diego Zoo, the location of the very first video ever uploaded to the platform by YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim back on April 23, 2005.

YouTube is using this data to authenticate that videos were recorded with genuine cameras. They don't need to be unedited to get the badge, but according to Youtube's support page, it won't allow any edits that break the chain of provenance or make it impossible to trace the video back to its original source, any significant alterations to the video’s core nature or content including sounds or visuals, or any edits that make the video incompatible with C2PA standards 2.1 and above.

YouTube users can already voluntarily flag videos as being their own AI creations, but this works in the opposite way, not only allowing them to label their video as real, but being being verifiable using technical standards.

However, as the C2PA standard is relatively new and only appears in select camera models, such as the Sony A1, A9 III and A7S III with a recent firmware update, it cannot verify footage from the past – meaning the 1969 moon landings would not qualify for a YouTube 'Captured with a camera' status. So it's unlikely to quieten any 'fake or not' conspiracy theorists any time soon…

• This is the world's first industry standard to assure a photo's authenticity
• What are Content Credentials and can they save photography
• Canon, Nikon and Sony are banding together in the fight against fake images

If you think photo editing is complicated enough, then video editing can feel ten times worse. It’s not just the extra complication of moving images, timing and timelines, but the further complication of sound. 

Thank goodness, then, for programs like Adobe Premiere Pro 2025, which aims to make video editing accessible to beginners. And not just accessible in terms of jargon and editing steps, but with accessible pricing too. Unlike Adobe Premiere Pro, which is available only on subscription, Premiere Elements 2025 is sold for a one-off license fee.

There is one (new) catch. Premiere Elements 2025 now comes with a fixed three-year license term, so it’s no longer software you can buy once and use forever. That said, Adobe updates both Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements annually, so it’s unlikely you’ll be using it in three years anyway.

Premiere Elements uses the same combination of Quick, Guided and Advanced modes found in Adobe Photoshop Elements, with the aim of catering for users of all experience levels. This is one of its key selling points.

Even so, it faces competition from some of the best free video editing software out there today, and once you start looking at paid-for products, it's up against some of the best video editors on the market.

Premiere Elements 2025: What’s new?

Adobe updates both Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements annually. You don’t have to upgrade every year, but there may be enough new features to make it worthwhile. Here’s a run-down of what’s new in Premiere Elements 2025:

New dynamic title designs with free Adobe Stock templates and new controls for styling and animating text. These are a great way to introduce longer movies.

New color correction tools improve Premiere Pro’s color enhancements, including a new white balance tool and color correction curves. and creative color grading options. Also new is support for LUTs, both camera log profile LUT conversions and creative LUTs you can supplement by importing your own. LUTs are a big part of creative color grading in video.

There’s also new, simplified timeline in the Advanced mode, where video and audio tracks are now grouped together (standard practise in other video editors). Adobe has also added support for Apple’s latest M3 processor, and has launched mobile and web companion apps too, though these are currently in beta. 

Adding ‘beta’ features to new software versions seems to be standard practise at Adobe now. At some point we can expect these to become final versions, but these beta tools are still functional.

It’s not the biggest list of new features ever, and if you currently own Premiere Elements 2024 there may not be enough here to tempt you to upgrade. 

Premiere Elements 2025: Price and availability

Adobe Premiere Elements 2025 is available now direct from the Adobe website and costs $99.99 / £86.99 (about AU$145.99). You can also get it as part of the Adobe Photoshop Elements 2025 & Premiere Elements 2025 bundle, which costs $149.99 / £130.49 (about AU$219.99). 

That’s not a bad price considering what you get, and in a market where more and more software publishers are shifting towards subscription plans. 

Premiere Elements 2025: Interface and usability

Premiere Elements 2025 follows the same pattern as Photoshop Elements. It uses the same companion Organizer app for photos and videos, and the same Home page window for browsing projects and launching tasks.

All the serious work is done in Premiere Elements itself, which attempts to cater for different user levels with its Quick, Guided and Advanced views. The idea is that the Quick view is a simple no-fuss, jargon-free editor, the Guided view walks you through more advanced processes when you’re ready to develop your skills and the Advanced view is for when you’re fully up to speed. 

This works up to a point, but there are aspects about the Quick mode which aren’t entirely convincing – it’s as if Adobe hasn’t really made a simpler video editor, but simply swept a lot of the technicalities under the carpet.

One very obvious example is the way Effects are applied via two buttons on the right side of the screen. Effects are applied by one button, which opens up an Effects browser but the effect settings are only visible if you click the second 'settings' button. Once you get that, it’s fine. But the effects are the same across all three views and many have quite complex parameters, for example the Shake Reduction effect has some fairly advanced options (and it’s not the worst for this) that someone using the Quick view might not be ready for.

Incidentally, the Shake Reduction effect changes its name to ‘Stabilization’ in the effects settings panel. Also, the timeline in the Quick view is called the ‘sceneline’. This kind of ad hoc jargon swapping isn’t helpful. 

Guided view does offer an introduction to manual video editing tools by walking you through each step, but it doesn’t seem quite as integrated as the Guided mode in Photoshop Elements. It’s more like an interactive help guide that tells you where tools are and what to do with them – it doesn’t present them ready to use in the Guided panel. 

The Advanced panel certainly gives you the most hands-on control and there’s enough here for some reasonably ambitious video projects, though the style of the motion graphics templates shows the emphasis is clearly on amateur/family use. 

Premiere Elements is powerful enough for most users, but it’s some way short of a professional editor like Premiere Pro, Apple Final Cut Pro or DaVinci Resolve. Even the free version of Resolve is much more powerful than this, supporting multiple timelines in a single project, ‘bins’ for advanced media management and full-blown audio editing and equalization tools in its Fairlight module.

In a strange way, in attempting to make Premiere Elements simple, Adobe has made it complicated. It’s attempted to simplify the complicated processes of video editing, but over-complicated the possible pathways and approaches you can take in making your movie.

Premiere Elements 2025: Performance

Premiere Elements 2025 performs pretty well on the whole, but not always. I did try the automatic highlight reel feature in Quick mode by feeding it around 30 clips from a day’s shooting in Cornwall, consisting of timelapses, slow motions, an RNLI lifeboat leaving a harbour, people diving and swimming and dogs playing in the surf on a beach – and after Adobe’s AI spend about half an hour (very literally) digesting and analyzing all this footage, it decided I didn’t have enough content for a highlight reel. Great. That’s half an hour I won’t get back.

The stabilization effect works well, and that’s very useful with unstabilized cameras and can also help with any left-over micro-jitters with those that do. Premiere Elements is not especially quick at analyzing the footage, but not really any worse than other video editors.

The color correction and grading tools are effective too, but they do seem rather fussy and old-fashioned, being based mainly around sliders rather than the more intuitive color wheels in Lightroom’s Color Grading panel, for example, or the color wheels other video editors. 

The audio editing tools are basic but effective. If you’ve got a lot of wind noise from using unshielded mics in windy conditions outdoors, for example, the High Pass filter does a good job of suppressing it. I also like the bundled music tracks and Adobe’s clever Remix technologies for adapting their length and intensity to match the video.

Where Premiere Elements is particularly strong is its huge range of visual effects, such as Vignetting, Lighting Effects, LavaLamp, GoldenLight… it’s a long list. However, many of these are novelty effects you’re unlikely to consider for more serious projects. (Was that diplomatic enough?)

Premiere Elements 2025: Verdict

To a degree, Premiere Elements 2025 basks in the aura of Premiere Pro, promising many of the same features and capabilities in a much more affordable and accessible program. The reality is somewhat different. Premiere Elements 2025 feels like a much older program that’s being kept going by a smattering of new features with every annual update. Underneath all that dazzling potential is a somewhat ordinary mid-range video editor with some clever AI features that often work well but sometimes don’t, and effects and graphics that would be fine for a school presentation, but not so much in a commercial environment.

But still, if you’re a Windows user it doesn’t have a lot of competition that is subscription free. It is pretty good value, even if  in the end you just go straight to the Advanced mode and ignore all the rest.

For Mac owners I think it’s slightly different because they’ve already got iMovie. Premiere Pro is more powerful, but you won’t always need its extra gadgets and you might not appreciate its extra complexity. iMovie does more than you expect, Premiere Pro might do less.

And then on both platforms there’s DaVinci Resolve. It’s free and it’s ridiculously powerful. It has a steep learning curve, but the hours you’ll spend figuring out stuff in Premiere Elements will get you quite a long way with DaVinci Resolve too.

Premiere Elements 2025: Alternatives

On day one of the Bristol Wildscreen Festival – which celebrates advances in natural world storytelling – I was lucky enough to go to an underwater cinematography masterclass.

Chaired by Yoland Bosiger, a producer on BBC Blue Planet II among other projects, the expert panel consisted of nature documentary cinematographer Hugh Miller, camera operator Bérénice Mathieu, and adventure and wildlife cameraman Rob Taylor. All revealed their underwater secrets.

It seems like the dream job, spending weeks travelling the world's oceans, filming natural phenomena that many never get to see other than through a screen.

Blue Planet II, which aired in 2017 was the most-watched TV show in the UK, with 17 million viewers across TV and online – and seen by many millions more in over 30 countries.

Filled with incredible storytelling and unfathomable shots, the challenges and preparation in shots like this are hard to imagine for laymen.

Mathieu is an incredibly experienced camera operator, just as comfortable under the waves as she is venturing across frozen sea ice. Her recent credits include ‘Shark with Steve Backshall’ and ‘Predators’ for Netflix.

She described the many dangers of long shoots: oxygen toxicity, proximity to dangerous animals, and the years of training, experience and qualifications these experts need to not only get the perfect shot, but stay safe in the water.

"I remember this one shoot," she told the room, “everything was perfect, the outside visibility, the weather conditions, the animal behavior, we had a drone up every single day, it looked amazing, the colors were beautiful.

"But as soon as we jumped in the water, the visibility was about two to five meters. So if you add up all the time we had in the water over five weeks, it was probably about two or three hours.

"So it means as soon as you jump in, it’s essential to be in your creative zone, ready to craft the story, and that comes with experience. The more time you spend in the water, all those elements will become way more natural."

She then moved on to some of the challenges of shooting in colder waters while wearing a dry suit.

"I started my career in the tropics, so it was really great to be in shorts the whole time. Then I had to get into dry suit diving, and you pretty much feel like an elephant in the water, so it’s really good to practice."

She said that ordinarily, when shooting for a long time in the water you often have a P-valve, which lets liquids, I’ll let you guess which ones, out of the dry suit.

"But sometimes that’s not possible, so in this case, you need nappies! So we’re just a bunch of grownups wearing nappies at work. So that’s the cool stuff of the job."

Bosiger has worked as a producer on Blue Planet II, Frozen Planet II and Planet Earth III, and she had a very interesting message for those who think that their dream career is out of their reach.

"We’re always on the lookout for new behavior for our programs... you can still be finding those stories while you train and gain experience.

"Blue Planet III is still looking for stories. There’s an unwritten rule that if you bring an idea and we use it, you will be used on the shoot. You may not be the main operator if you don’t have the experience yet, but we would use you as a second camera operator or in a secondary role."

If you're interested in getting into underwater photography, take a look at our guides to the best waterproof cameras, the best underwater drones, and the best underwater housings for cameras.

It's Adobe Max 2024! Which means Adobe is divulging all the details on the big projects it has been working on since the last Max – and unsurprisingly, for anyone following recent years, the focus is again all about Generative AI.

Since its launch, Adobe’s Firefly AI models have become an immensely popular part of Photoshop, Lightroom, and Express, (over 4 billion images generated!) and have rapidly expanded into touching every part of the Adobe ecosystem. AI has certainly changed the photo editing game forever – now Adobe aims to inspire a similar shift in video editing with the launch of the first public beta for generative AI for video.

So, what’s new in the beta? The big news is Adobe has added its first publically available AI video models to extend video or audio to cover gaps in footage, smooth out jarring transitions, and hold shots for longer. I have just seen a demonstration of some of the features on offer and it looks mind-blowing.

All these work in a similar way, you click and drag out the AI generator tool to fill in gaps in your timeline, and the AI works to analyze the clip you are editing and generate new frames that perfectly match that clip. The AI works out if the shot is best held static or if it should continue the current camera movement in the clip. It is really that simple, and in Adobe's demonstrations, the results are really impressive.

I am notoriously bad at holding shots for not quite long enough or not remembering to get enough b-roll footage, and Generative Extend is definitely set to save me a lot of stress in trying to fill the inevitable gaps I always find in my footage when I come to edit it.

Quick side note – Generative Extend is not to be confused with Generative Expand from apps like Photoshop, which can be used to expand the background of an image and add in more information, which Premiere doesn’t (currently) offer.

Check out a very quick demo of the software in action below:

Adobe is quick to point out that its AI is commercially safe by design and is trained on Adobe licensed stock and public domain content, with the model adhering to Adobe AI ethics principles, and is connected to the Adobe-led Content Credentials initiative to label any content generated using AI models.

This isn't the OpenAI Sora video generator equivalent that many were hoping for just yet. But while you also can’t yet generate new footage directly in Premiere Pro from a text or video prompt – it’s not far away. Adobe has teased a new text-to-video or image-to-video generator which will be available in Firefly soon (you can join the waitlist now).

If you have an Adobe Premiere Pro or All Apps subscription you can sign up for the Adobe Premiere Pro (Beta) right now in the Apps panel on Creative Cloud, and then select the Beta tab at the top.

Check out more options for video editing with our guide to the best video editing software.

Apple takes us behind the scenes showing us how it created its new Vision Pro thriller, Submerged.

The release of the Apple Vision Pro earlier this year promises to forever change the future of media consumption, and a particular focus has been on creating new immersive cinematic experiences. While we are not seeing an instant change, with companies like Blackmagic and Canon developing new products especially for the Vision Pro, it looks like it could be here to stay.

In a new behind-the-scenes video on Apple's YouTube channel, Academy award-winning filmmakers Edward Berger and James Friend take us on set to show us the entire filmmaking process for the Apple Vision Pro. You can watch the video below.

ABOVE: Watch the making of Submerged

Submerged is the first scripted film created for the Apple Vision Pro. Set on a submarine, it follows a Navy crew during the Second World War, featuring both tense emotion and jaw-dropping claustrophobic action. And, as the first time anyone has ever filmed in this cinematic format, it required innovative approaches.

"Everything we are doing here is the first time that anyone is ever doing it," says writer and director, Edward Berger.

"When you put on the Apple Vision Pro it does change the way you think about creating a story. It's a wonderful new medium that expands the horizon of storytelling because you're not watching a movie anymore, you're inside the story. It's going to change the future of filmmaking!"

The format offers audiences an enhanced immersive experience, showcasing a 180° field of view, placing them in the middle of the scene. This naturally gives the viewer the ability to become a camera operator, choosing to follow a subject as they enter your peripheral vision and following them to the main focus point of the scene.

This immersive nature meant that extra considerations had to be made, such as authentic set design, sound, and integrating lighting into the set to ensure it didn't appear on the camera's extensive view. With 180° vision, the filmmakers had to consider the intricate camera movements needed in such a confined space, needing to make sure that a track or dolly wasn't picked up on camera.

"I have worked a lot with the art department to create places within the set where we can hide a lot more of the mechanisms for moving a camera than we would on a normal shoot," says key grip, Guy Bennett says. "It really opens up so many opportunities to immerse the viewer in such an amazing world."

As someone who initially questioned the Apple Vision Pro as a way to consume cinema, I am now extremely excited to experience this innovative and immersive form of visual storytelling. Apple recently released a schedule for new shows, films, and TV experiences for the Vision Pro, and I wouldn't be surprised if we see some incredible horror movies announced as that could be revolutionary to the genre!

Check out our guides to the best VR headsets, the best 360 cameras, and the best cinema cameras.

DaVinci Resolve 19 is published by BlackMagic Design, the company behind Pocket Cinema and Ursa cinema cameras, together with a range video production equipment and mixers. It actually comes in two versions. DaVinci Resolve 19, which is free, and Davinci Resolve 19 Studio, which is a more powerful version sold separately but also bundled with some BlackMagic hardware products.

Both versions of DaVinci Resolve 19 are professional video editing applications on the same level as Apple Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere Pro. They incorporate powerful audio and effects tools too, so they are designed as all-in-one video editing solutions.

It's a kind of win-win for BlackMagic Design, because while DaVinci Resolve is one of the best free video editing tools you can get, DaVinci Resolve Studio is one of the best professional video editors.

You might imagine that the free version is pretty limited and designed to act as a tempter for the full product, but that’s not how it works in this instance. DaVinci Resolve 19 is a fully featured editor in its own right, with perhaps all the power – and more – that solo shooters, content creators and small production teams might need. There’s no catch.

DaVinci Resolve Studio 19 is a much more powerful tool that brings a multitude of AI workflow, editing and enhancement features and is designed for collaborative workflows and large-scale productions. BlackMagic claims DaVinci Resolve is “Hollywood’s most popular solution for editing, visual effects, motion graphics, color correction and audio post production.”

DaVinci Resolve 19: What’s new?

The new features in Davinci Resolve 19 are concentrated in the Studio version. There are so many that it would take thousands of words to describe them all, but here are a few highlights:

Auto Stingers: These can be moving graphics or sound transitions to let viewers know a scene or a camera viewpoint has changed.

Text Based Timeline Editing: You can edit clips based on their transcribed text directly, with multiple voice recognition and named speakerst.

AI Speech to Text Transcription: Automatically transcribes video and audio clips, with the ability to mark in and out points to edit or delete text, add markers, remove silence.

Automatic Subtitles: Transcribes speech to text automatically into a subtitle track on the timeline. 

AI Based Voice Isolation: Removes unwanted sounds from voice recording, and ideal for presenting or interviewing noisy environments. There’s also a new Built-in Dialogue Leveler.

UltraNR Noise Reduction: Uses the new DaVinci Neural Engine to reduce digital noise but maintain clarity. 

Film Look Creator: Adds cinematic ‘film’ looks with halation, bloom, grain, flicker, gate weave and vignetting.

Automatic Depth Map: Generates a 3D depth matte of a scene to allow separate foreground/background grading.

AI Audio Panning: A new IntelliTrack AI point tracker can follow people or objects as they move across the frame.

IntelliTrack AI Tracking: Powered by the DaVinci Neural Engine to optimize panning and tracking.

Music Remixer FX: Separates music into voice, drums, base, guitar, for example, for selective remixing.

Person Mask: Another DaVinci Neural Engine feature, this time to detect, mask and track people and their movement in a shot.

SuperScale: Advanced upscaling algorithm superior to standard resizing controls and ideal for scaling “archival footage” to today’s resolutions..

Smart Reframe for Social Media: Create square or vertical versions of shots using the DaVinci Neural Engine to identify key action and reframe the shot automatically.

Object Removal: You can use this to cover up moving objects in a scene – and there’s a Patch Removal option for static objects.

Optical Flow Speed Change: Uses an advanced retiming algorithm to slow down and extend the action in a sequence with frames “intelligently constructed” from existing visual data.

Track and Follow Objects: Follow objects and people in 3D space with masking for selective grading and effects.

That is just the tip of the iceberg. DaVinci Resolve 19 Studio is a major new release, so at this point you might be debating whether to upgrade. You don’t really need to worry, though, because your existing Resolve Studio license will still be valid.

If you’re not currently a Resolve user and you’re wondering if this is the right software for you, then there is a fully-featured free trial that will give you plenty of time to make your mind up.

DaVinci Resolve 19: Price and availability

DaVinci Resolve comes in two versions. DaVinci Resolve 19 is the free version, and is a full-powered video editor with no time limits or upgrade nagging. DaVinci Resolve Studio 19 is a more powerful version aimed at high-end studios and filmmakers. It sells for $295 / £235. Be aware, though, that many BlackMagic hardware products, such as its Pocket Cinema cameras, come with a Studio license included, so you may not have to pay at all. BlackMagic updates DaVinci Resolve regularly, but does not currently charge for updates.

DaVinci Resolve 19 vs Resolve Studio 19

Will the free version of DaVinci Resolve 19 be enough for you, or will you need the advanced tools in the paid-for Studio version. The first point to make is that the free version is not simply a cut-down version with extra features you can unlock. It’s a separate, fully-featured and very powerful professional video editing tool in its own right. The fact that it’s free really is quite remarkable. Nevertheless, there are things the Studio version does that the free version doesn’t, so here’s a brief run-down.

First, the free version is limited to 4K resolution and 60fps. This will be fine for many creators out there, but if you film in 6K open gate or 8K, you will need the Studio version, which go right up to 32K resolution (!) and 120p frame rates.

The free version offers pretty much all the video editing tools and effects you could ask for in a regular video editor, but the Studio version brings extremely powerful AI features such as UltraNR noise reduction, intelligent tracking, magic masking, music remixing and more. It’s a long, long list.

The Studio version is also better for resolution changes and horizontal/vertical crop options. It has a SuperScale feature to upscale 1080 video to 4K, for example, and a Smart Reframe feature that uses the software’s neural engine to crop and follow key objects.

You also get a new Film Look creator, whereas previously you might have needed a plug-in like Dehance. So while much of the increased power of Resolve Studio 19 is aimed at large production studios and multi-cam, multi-person setups, there’s still a lot for individual creators, filmmakers and smaller studios.

Perhaps the best approach is to start with the free version, see how you get on and then check the features in the Studio version to see if it’s worth swapping.

DaVinci Resolve 19: Interface and usability

Rating Davinci Resolve 19 for design and usability is difficult. It’s a bit like Photoshop, in that it’s designed for speed, efficiency and clarity for professional users. It’s not designed as an easy introduction to video editing for beginners.

For a start, it’s organized into seven different panels, or workspaces. There is some overlap between them, but each one focuses on a specific area of editing. First is the Media panel, where you organize your media into Bins, add new timelines and generally manage all the assets used in the project. Next is the descriptively named Cut panel, where you cut your clips and media together in your video timeline. The Edit panel is where you make detailed adjustments to the video and audio tracks, clip by clip, and after that you have the Fusion panel for special effects, the Color panel for in-depth color grading and Fairlight panel for detailed audio adjustments. Finally there’s the Deliver panel, where you choose your video output settings.

You may not use all these panels, you probably won’t use them in order but jump to and fro as needed, and you may certain workflows more intuitive for you.

That’s just a quick, simple tour. In fact, each panel offers huge depth of control, and there’s a lot to take in. There are some great tutorials online to get you started, but if you’re a new user you should still expect to spend a few hours getting up to speed, much of it absorbing the techniques and terminology of high-end video editing. 

If you’re coming here from Final Cut or Premiere Pro you’ll already know the principles and just need to adapt to a new environment. If you’re coming here from iMovie on the Mac, say, or any other basic video editor, then it’s going to take a little longer to gain any kind of fluency. But if you’re a first-time video editor looking for a free tool to get you started, then DaVinci Resolve will probably scare you to death.

DaVinci Resolve 19: Performance

Video editing is a hardware-intensive process, and the higher the resolution and frame rates you work at, the more processing power is required. This, and the fact that everyone’s hardware setup is different, makes it hard to measure performance. On my old 2017 iMac with 16GB RAM it ran well enough up to 4K resolution but wasn’t fast – it felt about as speedy as iMovie. On my newer Mac Studio with 32GB RAM and Apple Silicon it’s very fast. If you’re going to work at higher resolutions and frame rates, though, with a lot of real time FX and audio/video track mixing, you’ll probably need to look again at your hardware setup. 

DaVinci Resolve 19: Verdict

DaVinci Resolve is available as a free version which has much of the power of paid-for professional video editors, together with an efficient workflow and powerful audio and grading tools. But just because it’s free, it doesn’t mean it’s good for beginners. There is a great deal of excellent training material online, but new users will have a lot to learn and even users with some experience of other video editors will need time to adapt to Resolve’s way of working.

And then there’s DaVinci Resolve 19 Studio. This is a professional video editing powerhouse that packs in just about every AI enhancement and effects tool imaginable and is right at the cutting edge of video production. This is the version you’ll need if you want to edit 6K video, 8K and beyond. It does come with a fairly stiff one-off license fee – unless you buy a BlackMagic camera or certain other BlackMagic products, which include a free Resolve Studio license key.

For amateurs, and many professionals, DaVinci Resolve 19 is the best free video software you can get – if you can put in the time to learn it. And for those who need to go further, Resolve 19 Studio is the next logical step and one of the top three professional video editors on the market right now.

DaVinci Resolve 19: Alternatives