If you have used Apple^R iMovie^R to create movies from your video clips, you know how easy it is to use this software compared to more robust software such as Adobe^R Premiere^R Pro and After Effects^R. Now, Adobe has incorporated new video editing, creation and rendering tools, along with a new Timeline, inside Photoshop^R CS6. This new video interface, along with the Adobe Media Encoder, are sure to become an iMovie competitor.

So, what kind of new tools do we have? Open Photoshop and use the Workspace drop-down menu (upper right corner) to set the interface to the Motion workspace. You will see that the old Animation Timeline, now called the Timeline, has been completely changed to better incorporate video editing. When we open a .mp4 or other video file, it will automatically be placed on a Video Group layer in the Layers panel and on the Timeline Track.

As you can see, the new Timeline places all the video clips and stills into a Video Group and you can also add one or more audio tracks. We also have icons for playing a preview of our video, muting the audio, splitting the video clip at the location of the Playhead and applying a transition.

One of the first tasks in any video project is to trim away the unwanted footage in the video clip. To make a simple trim, you simply place your cursor at one end of the clip until you see the Trim cursor and then drag to shorten the clip. You will see the helpful Trim pop-up box that displays the amount of the clip, in seconds from the beginning of the clip, that you have selected and also the total length that the clip will be after the selected area has been removed.

The next common task is to add more video clips and still shots to your project. Click the Plus icon on the right end of the Timeline Track to open the file browser window and select the assets you wish to include. The clips will be added in sequence to the Timeline Track at the end of the original clip and also into the Video Group in the Layers panel. Each clip is on its own layer in the Layers panel allowing for additional editing on each individual clip. You can fix underexposed/overexposed footage, adjust contrast and color balance, add vibrance and apply Smart Filters and special effects on Adjustment Layers.

This is a video project, so we need to add a little interest to our still images. Photoshop CS6 has several pan and zoom motions that we can attach to each image. If we right-click on the still photo, we have a choice of the following in the Motions pop-up menu.

Pan and Zoom
Pan
Zoom
Rotate
Rotate and Zoom

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*Adobe provided a copy of this software to me for review purposes.

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