Here's an overview of the most recent Blender jobs on Blender Artists, ArtStation and 3djobs.xyz: Looking for someone to create some low poly cartoonish clothing asset for my character I'm looking for an artist to make me a Thumbnail for YouTube Vert

You’ve drawn fifty versions of the same screen — and you still hate every one of them. Begrudgingly, you pick three, show them to your product manager, and hear: “Looks cool, but the idea doesn’t work.” Sound familiar? In this article, I’ll unpack why designers fall into detail work at the wrong moment, examining both process pitfalls and the underlying psychological reasons, as understanding these traps is the first step to overcoming them. I’ll also share tactics I use to climb out of that trap. Reason #1 You’re Afraid To Show Rough Work We designers worship detail. We’re taught that true craft equals razor‑sharp typography, perfect grids, and pixel precision. So the minute a task arrives, we pop open Figma and start polishing long before polish is needed. I’ve skipped the sketch phase more times than I care to admit. I told myself it would be faster, yet I always ended up spending hours producing a tidy mock‑up when a scribbled thumbnail would have sparked a five‑minute chat with my product manager. Rough sketches felt “unprofessional,” so I hid them. The cost? Lost time, wasted energy — and, by the third redo, teammates were quietly wondering if I even understood the brief. The real problem here is the habit: we open Figma and start perfecting the UI before we’ve even solved the problem. So why do we hide these rough sketches? It’s not just a bad habit or plain silly. There are solid psychological reasons behind it. We often just call it perfectionism, but it’s deeper than wanting things neat. Digging into the psychology (like the research by Hewitt and Flett) shows there are a couple of flavors driving this: Socially prescribed perfectionismIt’s that nagging feeling that everyone else expects perfect work from you, which makes showing anything rough feel like walking into the lion’s den. Self-oriented perfectionismWhere you’re the one setting impossibly high standards for yourself, leading to brutal self-criticism if anything looks slightly off. Either way, the result’s the same: showing unfinished work feels wrong, and you miss out on that vital early feedback. Back to the design side, remember that clients rarely see architects’ first pencil sketches, but these sketches still exist; they guide structural choices before the 3D render. Treat your thumbnails the same way — artifacts meant to collapse uncertainty, not portfolio pieces. Once stakeholders see the upside, roughness becomes a badge of speed, not sloppiness. So, the key is to consciously make that shift: Treat early sketches as disposable tools for thinking and actively share them to get feedback faster. Reason #2: You Fix The Symptom, Not The Cause Before tackling any task, we need to understand what business outcome we’re aiming for. Product managers might come to us asking to enlarge the payment button in the shopping cart because users aren’t noticing it. The suggested solution itself isn’t necessarily bad, but before redesigning the button, we should ask, “What data suggests they aren’t noticing it?” Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you shouldn’t trust your product manager. On the contrary, these questions help ensure you’re on the same page and working with the same data. From my experience, here are several reasons why users might not be clicking that coveted button: Users don’t understand that this step is for payment. They understand it’s about payment but expect order confirmation first. Due to incorrect translation, users don’t understand what the button means. Lack of trust signals (no security icons, unclear seller information). Unexpected additional costs (hidden fees, shipping) that appear at this stage. Technical issues (inactive button, page freezing). Now, imagine you simply did what the manager suggested. Would you have solved the problem? Hardly. Moreover, the responsibility for the unresolved issue would fall on you, as the interface solution lies within the design domain. The product manager actually did their job correctly by identifying a problem: suspiciously, few users are clicking the button. Psychologically, taking on this bigger role isn’t easy. It means overcoming the fear of making mistakes and the discomfort of exploring unclear problems rather than just doing tasks. This shift means seeing ourselves as partners who create value — even if it means fighting a hesitation to question product managers (which might come from a fear of speaking up or a desire to avoid challenging authority) — and understanding that using our product logic expertise proactively is crucial for modern designers. There’s another critical reason why we, designers, need to be a bit like product managers: the rise of AI. I deliberately used a simple example about enlarging a button, but I’m confident that in the near future, AI will easily handle routine design tasks. This worries me, but at the same time, I’m already gladly stepping into the product manager’s territory: understanding product and business metrics, formulating hypotheses, conducting research, and so on. It might sound like I’m taking work away from PMs, but believe me, they undoubtedly have enough on their plates and are usually more than happy to delegate some responsibilities to designers. Reason #3: You’re Solving The Wrong Problem Before solving anything, ask whether the problem even deserves your attention. During a major home‑screen redesign, our goal was to drive more users into paid services. The initial hypothesis — making service buttons bigger and brighter might help returning users — seemed reasonable enough to test. However, even when A/B tests (a method of comparing two versions of a design to determine which performs better) showed minimal impact, we continued to tweak those buttons. Only later did it click: the home screen isn’t the place to sell; visitors open the app to start, not to buy. We removed that promo block, and nothing broke. Contextual entry points deeper into the journey performed brilliantly. Lesson learned: Without the right context, any visual tweak is lipstick on a pig. Why did we get stuck polishing buttons instead of stopping sooner? It’s easy to get tunnel vision. Psychologically, it’s likely the good old sunk cost fallacy kicking in: we’d already invested time in the buttons, so stopping felt like wasting that effort, even though the data wasn’t promising. It’s just easier to keep fiddling with something familiar than to admit we need a new plan. Perhaps the simple question I should have asked myself when results stalled was: “Are we optimizing the right thing or just polishing something that fundamentally doesn’t fit the user’s primary goal here?” That alone might have saved hours. Reason #4: You’re Drowning In Unactionable Feedback We all discuss our work with colleagues. But here’s a crucial point: what kind of question do you pose to kick off that discussion? If your go-to is “What do you think?” well, that question might lead you down a rabbit hole of personal opinions rather than actionable insights. While experienced colleagues will cut through the noise, others, unsure what to evaluate, might comment on anything and everything — fonts, button colors, even when you desperately need to discuss a user flow. What matters here are two things: The question you ask, The context you give. That means clearly stating the problem, what you’ve learned, and how your idea aims to fix it. For instance: “The problem is our payment conversion rate has dropped by X%. I’ve interviewed users and found they abandon payment because they don’t understand how the total amount is calculated. My solution is to show a detailed cost breakdown. Do you think this actually solves the problem for them?” Here, you’ve stated the problem (conversion drop), shared your insight (user confusion), explained your solution (cost breakdown), and asked a direct question. It’s even better if you prepare a list of specific sub-questions. For instance: “Are all items in the cost breakdown clear?” or “Does the placement of this breakdown feel intuitive within the payment flow?” Another good habit is to keep your rough sketches and previous iterations handy. Some of your colleagues’ suggestions might be things you’ve already tried. It’s great if you can discuss them immediately to either revisit those ideas or definitively set them aside. I’m not a psychologist, but experience tells me that, psychologically, the reluctance to be this specific often stems from a fear of our solution being rejected. We tend to internalize feedback: a seemingly innocent comment like, “Have you considered other ways to organize this section?” or “Perhaps explore a different structure for this part?” can instantly morph in our minds into “You completely messed up the structure. You’re a bad designer.” Imposter syndrome, in all its glory. So, to wrap up this point, here are two recommendations: Prepare for every design discussion.A couple of focused questions will yield far more valuable input than a vague “So, what do you think?”. Actively work on separating feedback on your design from your self-worth.If a mistake is pointed out, acknowledge it, learn from it, and you’ll be less likely to repeat it. This is often easier said than done. For me, it took years of working with a psychotherapist. If you struggle with this, I sincerely wish you strength in overcoming it. Reason #5 You’re Just Tired Sometimes, the issue isn’t strategic at all — it’s fatigue. Fussing over icon corners can feel like a cozy bunker when your brain is fried. There’s a name for this: decision fatigue. Basically, your brain’s battery for hard thinking is low, so it hides out in the easy, comfy zone of pixel-pushing. A striking example comes from a New York Times article titled “Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?.” It described how judges deciding on release requests were far more likely to grant release early in the day (about 70% of cases) compared to late in the day (less than 10%) simply because their decision-making energy was depleted. Luckily, designers rarely hold someone’s freedom in their hands, but the example dramatically shows how fatigue can impact our judgment and productivity. What helps here: Swap tasks.Trade tickets with another designer; novelty resets your focus. Talk to another designer.If NDA permits, ask peers outside the team for a sanity check. Step away.Even a ten‑minute walk can do more than a double‑shot espresso. By the way, I came up with these ideas while walking around my office. I was lucky to work near a river, and those short walks quickly turned into a helpful habit. And one more trick that helps me snap out of detail mode early: if I catch myself making around 20 little tweaks — changing font weight, color, border radius — I just stop. Over time, it turned into a habit. I have a similar one with Instagram: by the third reel, my brain quietly asks, “Wait, weren’t we working?” Funny how that kind of nudge saves a ton of time. Four Steps I Use to Avoid Drowning In Detail Knowing these potential traps, here’s the practical process I use to stay on track: 1. Define the Core Problem & Business Goal Before anything, dig deep: what’s the actual problem we’re solving, not just the requested task or a surface-level symptom? Ask ‘why’ repeatedly. What user pain or business need are we addressing? Then, state the clear business goal: “What metric am I moving, and do we have data to prove this is the right lever?” If retention is the goal, decide whether push reminders, gamification, or personalised content is the best route. The wrong lever, or tackling a symptom instead of the cause, dooms everything downstream. 2. Choose the Mechanic (Solution Principle) Once the core problem and goal are clear, lock the solution principle or ‘mechanic’ first. Going with a game layer? Decide if it’s leaderboards, streaks, or badges. Write it down. Then move on. No UI yet. This keeps the focus high-level before diving into pixels. 3. Wireframe the Flow & Get Focused Feedback Now open Figma. Map screens, layout, and transitions. Boxes and arrows are enough. Keep the fidelity low so the discussion stays on the flow, not colour. Crucially, when you share these early wires, ask specific questions and provide clear context (as discussed in ‘Reason #4’) to get actionable feedback, not just vague opinions. 4. Polish the Visuals (Mindfully) I only let myself tweak grids, type scales, and shadows after the flow is validated. If progress stalls, or before a major polish effort, I surface the work in a design critique — again using targeted questions and clear context — instead of hiding in version 47. This ensures detailing serves the now-validated solution. Even for something as small as a single button, running these four checkpoints takes about ten minutes and saves hours of decorative dithering. Wrapping Up Next time you feel the pull to vanish into mock‑ups before the problem is nailed down, pause and ask what you might be avoiding. Yes, that can expose an uncomfortable truth. But pausing to ask what you might be avoiding — maybe the fuzzy core problem, or just asking for tough feedback — gives you the power to face the real issue head-on. It keeps the project focused on solving the right problem, not just perfecting a flawed solution. Attention to detail is a superpower when used at the right moment. Obsessing over pixels too soon, though, is a bad habit and a warning light telling us the process needs a rethink.

Classic splitscreens, traditional face replacements and new approaches to machine learning-assisted face swapping allowed for twinning shots in ‘Mickey 17’. An excerpt from issue #32 of befores & afters magazine. The art of representing two characters on screen at the same time has become known as ‘twinning’. For Mickey 17 visual effects supervisor Dan Glass, the effect of seeing both Mickey 17 and 18 together was one he looked to achieve with a variety of methodologies. “With a technique like that,” he says, “you always want to use a range of tricks, because you don’t want people to figure it out. You want to keep them like, ‘Oh, wait a minute. How did they…?” “Going back to the way that Director Bong is so prepared and organized,” adds Glass, “it again makes the world of difference with that kind of work, because he thumbnails every shot. Then, some of them are a bit more fleshed out in storyboards. You can look at it and go, ‘Okay, in this situation, this is what the camera’s doing, this is what the actor’s doing,’ which in itself is quite interesting, because he pre-thinks all of this. You’d think that the actors show up and basically just have to follow the steps like robots. It’s not like that. He gives them an environment to work in, but the shots do end up extraordinarily close to what he thumbnails, and it made it a lot simpler to go through.” Those different approaches to twinning ranged from simple splitscreens, to traditional face replacements, and then substantially with a machine learned AI approach, now usually termed ‘face swapping’. What made the twinning work a tougher task than usual, suggests Glass, was the fact that the two Pattinson characters are virtually identical. “Normally, when you’re doing some kind of face replacement, you’re comparing it to a memory of the face. But this was right in front of you as two Mickeys looking strikingly similar.” Here’s how a typical twinning shot was achieved, as described by Glass. “Because Mickey was mostly dressed the same, with only a slight hair change, we were able to have Robert play both roles and to do them one after another. Sometimes, you have to do these things where hair and makeup or costume has a significant variation, so you’re either waiting a long time, which slows production, or you’re coming back at another time to do the different roles, which always makes the process a lot more complicated to match, but we were able to do that immediately.” “Based on the design of the shot,” continues Glass, “I would recommend which of Robert’s parts should be shot first. This was most often determined by which role had more impact on the camera movement. A huge credit goes to Robert for his ability to flip between the roles so effortlessly.” In the film, Mickey 17 is more passive and Mickey 18 is more aggressive. Pattinson reflected the distinct characters in his actions, including for a moment in which they fight. This fight, overseen by stunt coordinator Paul Lowe, represented moments of close interaction between the two Mickeys. It was here that a body double was crucial in shooting. The body double was also relied upon for the classic twinning technique of shooting ‘dirty’ over-the- shoulder out of focus shots of the double—ie. 17 looking at 18. However, it was quickly determined that even these would need face replacement work. “Robert’s jawline is so distinct that even those had to be replaced or shot as split screens,” observes Glass. When the shot was a moving one, no motion control was employed. “I’ve never been a big advocate for motion control,” states Glass. “To me it’s applicable when you’re doing things like miniatures where you need many matching passes, but I think when performances are involved, it interferes too much. It slows down a production’s speed of movement, but it’s also restrictive. Performance and camera always benefit from more flexibility.” “It helped tremendously that Director Bong and DOP Darius Khondji shot quite classically with minimal crane and Steadicam moves,” says Glass. “So, a lot of the moves are pan and dolly. There are some Steadicams in there that we were sometimes able to do splitscreens on. I wasn’t always sure that we could get away with the splitscreen as we shot it, but since we were always shooting the two roles, we had the footage to assess the practicality later. We were always prepared to go down a CG or machine learning route, but where we could use the splitscreen, that was the preference.” The Hydralite rig, developed by Volucap. Source: https://volucap.com Rising Sun Pictures (visual effects supervisor Guido Wolter) handled the majority of twinning visual effects, completing them as splitscreen composites, 2D face replacements, and most notably via their machine learning toolset REVIZE, which utilized facial and body capture of Pattinson to train a model of his face and torso to swap for the double’s. A custom capture rig, dubbed the ‘Crazy Rig’ and now officially, The Hydralite, was devised and configured by Volucap to capture multiple angles of Robert on set in each lighting environment in order to produce the best possible reference for the machine learning algorithm. “For me, it was a completely legitimate use of the technique,” attests Glass, in terms of the machine learning approach. “All of the footage that we used to go into that process was captured on our movie for our movie. There’s nothing historic, or going through past libraries of footage, and it was all with Robert’s approval. I think the results were tremendous.” “It’s staggering to me as I watch the movie that the performances of each character are so flawlessly consistent throughout the film, because I know how much we were jumping around,” notes Glass. “I did encourage that we rehearse scenes ahead. Let’s say 17 was going to be the first role we captured, I’d have them rehearse it the other way around so that the double knew what he was going to do. Therefore, eyelines, movement, pacing and in instances where we were basically replacing the likeness of his head or even torso, we were still able to use the double’s performance and then map to that.” Read the full Mickey 17 issue of befores & afters magazine in PRINT from Amazon or as a DIGITAL EDITION on Patreon. Remember, you can also subscribe to the DIGITAL EDITION as a tier on the Patreon and get a new issue every time one is released. The post The art of two Mickeys appeared first on befores & afters.

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17 Cutest Kawaii Fonts That are So Adorable Zoe Santoro • May 30, 2025 In this article:See more ▼Post may contain affiliate links which give us commissions at no cost to you. Kawaii fonts are exactly what they sound like – typefaces that embody the Japanese concept of “kawaii” (meaning cute). These fonts typically feature rounded letterforms, playful details, and that unmistakable charm that makes you want to squeeze them like a plushie. Whether you’re designing anime merchandise, creating content for social media, or just want to add a dash of cuteness to your projects, kawaii fonts are your secret weapon for instant adorability. 👋 Psst... Did you know you can get unlimited downloads of 59,000+ fonts and millions of other creative assets for just $16.95/mo? Learn more »The Most Adorable Kawaii Fonts of 2025 Not all cute fonts are created equal, so I’ve curated a collection of the most genuinely kawaii typefaces that capture that authentic anime aesthetic. Here are my top picks: Bubble Bliss Bloom Bubble Bliss Bloom is a groovy font that exudes a cute and chunky aesthetic. Its playful design incorporates bubble-like elements, making it perfect for anime-inspired or youthful projects that require a fun and energetic typographic approach.Cute Lime Cute Lime is a charming bubble display font that brings a refreshing and lively feel to designs. Its rounded, inflated letterforms create a sweet and approachable look, ideal for projects targeting a younger audience or those aiming for a lighthearted vibe.Clefy Clefy is a delightful bubble font that combines cuteness with a touch of sophistication. Its inflated characters maintain a clean and legible appearance, making it versatile for both playful and moderately formal designs that require a friendly, approachable typeface.BLUM BLUM is a cute and lovely bubble font that blends script and handwritten styles with sans-serif elements. This decorative typeface is perfect for children’s products, as it captures a youthful spirit while maintaining readability and charm.Get 300+ Fonts for FREEEnter your email to download our 100% free "Font Lover's Bundle". For commercial & personal use. No royalties. No fees. No attribution. 100% free to use anywhere. Babel Gamee Babel Gamee is a playful and chunky bubble font that stands out with its bold, inflated characters. This decorative typeface is ideal for game designs, children’s products, or any project that requires a fun, chubby letterform with high visual impact.Fluffy Blitz Fluffy Blitz is a dynamic graffiti bubble font that brings street art flair to designs. With its playful and cartoon-like appearance, this font is perfect for urban-themed projects, youth-oriented designs, or any work that needs a bold, energetic typographic statement.Smothy Bubble Font Smothy Bubble Font combines retro charm with a modern bubble aesthetic. Its smooth, rounded forms create a nostalgic yet contemporary feel, making it suitable for vintage-inspired designs or projects that aim to blend old-school cool with current trends.Booba Candy Booba Candy is a bold and playful typeface that evokes the sweetness of confectionery. Its thick, rounded forms and lively character make it an excellent choice for candy packaging, children’s products, or any design that needs to convey a fun, indulgent feel.Dwangku Dwangku is a joyful display font that combines bubble-like qualities with a sans-serif structure. Its upbeat and fun design makes it perfect for headlines, logos, or any project that requires a cheerful and eye-catching typographic element.Baby Glaze Baby Glaze is a decorative font that captures the essence of cartoons and childhood. Its soft, rounded forms and playful design make it ideal for children’s books, nursery decor, or any project targeting a young audience or aiming for a whimsical touch.Wanbots Wanbots is a bubble font that combines pop culture appeal with retro aesthetics. This sans-serif typeface offers a unique blend of futuristic and vintage elements, making it suitable for tech-related designs, retro-futuristic themes, or modern projects with a nostalgic twist.Love You Love You is a funny and cute balloon font that includes both letters and symbols. This decorative sans-serif typeface is perfect for Valentine’s Day designs, love-themed projects, or any work that needs to convey affection with a lighthearted, playful approach.Daily Bubble Font Daily Bubble Font combines retro charm with modern bubble aesthetics. Its rounded, inflated characters offer a fresh take on vintage typography, making it suitable for nostalgic designs, casual branding, or projects that need a friendly, approachable typeface.Bloombang Bloombang is a bubble display font that offers a bold and eye-catching typographic solution. This decorative sans-serif typeface features inflated letterforms that create visual impact, making it ideal for headlines, logos, or any design that needs to make a strong statement.Love Bold Love Bold is a display font that combines cuteness with a strong visual presence. Its bold character and child-like charm make it perfect for children’s products, love-themed designs, or any project that needs to convey affection with a touch of playfulness and strength.Gumiec Urban Gumiec Urban is a graffiti bubble font that brings street art style to typography. Its punk and groovy aesthetic makes it perfect for urban-themed designs, music-related projects, or any work that needs to convey a rebellious, energetic vibe with a touch of street credibility.Bubblegum Bubblegum is a lively bubble font that captures the essence of its namesake. Its rounded, inflated characters suggest movement and fluidity, making it ideal for designs related to confectionery, children’s products, or any project that needs to convey a fun, bouncy aesthetic.What Makes Kawaii Fonts So Irresistibly Cute? The magic of kawaii fonts lies in several key design characteristics that trigger our natural “aww” response: Rounded, Soft Letterforms Just like how baby animals have rounded features that make us want to protect them, kawaii fonts feature soft, curved letterforms instead of sharp edges. These gentle curves create an immediate sense of friendliness and approachability. The rounded shapes mimic the aesthetic of anime character designs, where even tough characters often have softer, more appealing features than their realistic counterparts. Playful Character Details True kawaii fonts often incorporate delightful little details that give each letter personality. You might find hearts dotting the i’s, stars incorporated into letterforms, or tiny faces peeking out from within characters. These whimsical touches transform ordinary text into something that feels alive and full of character – just like the expressive details that make anime characters so memorable. Bouncy, Uneven Baselines Many kawaii fonts feature letters that don’t sit perfectly on the baseline. Instead, they bounce up and down slightly, creating a sense of movement and energy that feels spontaneous and joyful. This imperfection paradoxically makes the fonts more perfect for their intended purpose – conveying that carefree, happy energy that’s central to kawaii culture. Pastel-Friendly Proportions Kawaii fonts are designed to work beautifully with the soft, pastel color palettes that dominate anime and Japanese cute culture. Their proportions and spacing are optimized to look stunning in pinks, lavenders, mint greens, and other dreamy hues. Where Can You Use Kawaii Fonts? The adorable nature of kawaii fonts makes them perfect for specific design contexts where cuteness is not just welcome – it’s essential: Anime and Manga Projects Obviously, kawaii fonts are a natural fit for anything anime-related. Whether you’re designing covers for manga, creating promotional materials for anime conventions, or developing an anime-inspired app, these fonts help establish that authentic Japanese cute aesthetic. Gaming and Streaming Graphics The gaming community, especially fans of Japanese games and kawaii aesthetics, absolutely loves these fonts. They’re perfect for Twitch overlays, YouTube thumbnails, gaming logos, and streaming graphics where you want to convey a fun, approachable vibe. Social Media Content Instagram posts, TikTok graphics, and Pinterest pins often benefit from kawaii fonts, especially when targeting younger audiences or communities interested in anime, K-pop, or Japanese culture. These fonts help content stand out in crowded social feeds. Children’s Products and Brands The inherently friendly and non-threatening nature of kawaii fonts makes them excellent choices for children’s books, toy packaging, educational materials, and youth-oriented brands that want to feel welcoming and fun. Fashion and Lifestyle Brands Brands targeting the “kawaii fashion” market – think Harajuku street style, pastel goth, or fairy kei aesthetics – can use these fonts to immediately signal their alignment with cute culture and Japanese-inspired fashion trends. Pro Tip: When using kawaii fonts for branding, pair them with clean, simple layouts to let the font’s personality shine without overwhelming the design. Where to Avoid Kawaii Fonts While kawaii fonts are undeniably adorable, there are certain contexts where their cuteness works against your design goals: Professional Business Communications Unless you’re specifically in the kawaii/anime industry, using these fonts for business cards, corporate presentations, or formal communications can undermine your professional credibility. Save them for creative projects instead. Serious or Somber Content The cheerful nature of kawaii fonts makes them inappropriate for serious topics, news content, academic papers, or any context where gravity and respect are paramount. High-Information Density Designs While kawaii fonts excel at grabbing attention, they can become difficult to read in large blocks of text. Stick to using them for headlines, short phrases, or decorative elements rather than body text. Formal Design Contexts Museums, government websites, legal documents, and other formal institutions should generally avoid kawaii fonts unless they’re specifically creating content about Japanese culture or targeting younger audiences. How to Choose the Perfect Kawaii Font With so many adorable options available, here’s how to select the kawaii font that’s just right for your project: Consider Your Audience Are you designing for hardcore anime fans who will appreciate subtle references and authentic Japanese typography? Or are you targeting a broader audience that just enjoys cute aesthetics? More authentic kawaii fonts work better for anime enthusiasts, while more generally “cute” fonts appeal to wider audiences. Match the Energy Level Some kawaii fonts are quietly cute, while others are energetically adorable. Match your font choice to the energy level of your content. A gentle, soft kawaii font works for meditation apps or skincare brands, while a bouncy, energetic one suits gaming content or party invitations. Test Readability Always test your chosen kawaii font at the size it will be used. Some highly decorative kawaii fonts lose their charm (and legibility) when scaled down for mobile screens or small print applications. Consider Cultural Sensitivity Since kawaii culture originates from Japan, be mindful of using these fonts in ways that respectfully appreciate rather than appropriate the culture. Understanding the context and meaning behind kawaii aesthetics will help you use these fonts more thoughtfully. Remember: The best kawaii font is one that feels authentic to the kawaii aesthetic while serving your specific design needs. Don’t just pick the “cutest” one – pick the one that works best for your project. Kawaii Font Pairing and Color Tips To get the most out of your kawaii fonts, consider these design best practices: Color Palette Magic Kawaii fonts shine brightest when paired with the right colors. Think soft pastels, dreamy gradients, and colors inspired by Japanese aesthetics. Pink and lavender are classics, but don’t overlook mint green, peach, sky blue, and cream. For contrast, pair your kawaii fonts with pure white or very light backgrounds. This creates that clean, airy feel that’s essential to kawaii design. Smart Font Pairing When combining kawaii fonts with other typefaces, balance is key. Pair a highly decorative kawaii font with a clean, simple sans-serif for body text. This gives you the personality you want while maintaining readability. Never pair two competing kawaii fonts together – let one be the star while supporting fonts stay neutral and clean. Layout Considerations Kawaii fonts work best when they have room to breathe. Give them plenty of white space, use them for shorter text elements, and consider how they’ll look alongside images or illustrations in your kawaii aesthetic. The Psychology Behind Kawaii Typography Understanding why kawaii fonts are so effective can help you use them more strategically in your designs: The “Baby Schema” Effect Kawaii fonts trigger what scientists call the “baby schema” – our evolutionary response to infant-like features. The rounded shapes, soft edges, and playful proportions mimic characteristics that make us want to nurture and protect, creating an immediate positive emotional response. Cultural Comfort For audiences familiar with anime and Japanese culture, kawaii fonts provide cultural comfort and belonging. They signal that you understand and appreciate their interests, creating an instant connection. Stress Relief Through Design In our increasingly stressful world, kawaii aesthetics offer a form of visual stress relief. The gentle, non-threatening nature of kawaii fonts can actually help viewers feel more relaxed and positive. Expert Opinions: Designers on Kawaii Typography Trends I reached out to several typography experts and anime industry professionals to get their insights on kawaii font trends: Yuki Tanaka, Anime Production Designer: “Kawaii fonts have evolved beyond just being ‘cute.’ Today’s best kawaii typefaces understand the balance between authenticity and accessibility. They respect Japanese design principles while being readable for global audiences.” Maria Santos, Digital Brand Designer: “I’ve seen a huge increase in clients requesting kawaii-inspired fonts, even for non-anime brands. There’s something about that gentle, approachable aesthetic that resonates with people seeking comfort and positivity in design.” David Kim, Gaming Industry Designer: “The gaming community has fully embraced kawaii typography. We’re seeing these fonts used not just in obviously cute games, but in UI design for apps and platforms where user comfort and approachability are priorities.” Common Kawaii Font Questions Let’s address some frequently asked questions about kawaii fonts: What makes a font “kawaii” versus just “cute”? True kawaii fonts draw specifically from Japanese aesthetic principles and anime/manga typography traditions. While cute fonts might just be rounded or playful, kawaii fonts embody the specific cultural aesthetic of Japanese cuteness, often incorporating elements like asymmetry, soft imperfection, and emotionally expressive details. Can I use kawaii fonts for commercial projects? It depends on the specific font’s license. Many kawaii fonts are available for commercial use, but always check the licensing terms before using them in paid projects. Some require purchase of a commercial license, while others are free for all uses. Do kawaii fonts work in languages other than English? Most kawaii fonts are designed primarily for English and basic Latin characters. However, some include Japanese characters (hiragana, katakana, and basic kanji) or extended character sets for other languages. Check the font specifications to see what languages are supported. How do I make my own kawaii font? Creating a kawaii font requires understanding both typography basics and kawaii aesthetic principles. Start by studying authentic Japanese kawaii design, practice drawing rounded, expressive letterforms, and consider using font creation software like FontForge or Glyphs. Remember that cultural sensitivity is important when creating fonts inspired by Japanese aesthetics. The Future of Kawaii Typography As we look ahead to the rest of 2025 and beyond, kawaii fonts are evolving in exciting directions: Variable Font Technology New kawaii fonts are beginning to incorporate variable font technology, allowing designers to adjust cuteness levels, roundness, and playfulness on a sliding scale. This gives unprecedented control over the kawaii aesthetic. Cultural Fusion Styles We’re seeing kawaii fonts that blend Japanese cuteness with other cultural aesthetics – Korean-inspired kawaii fonts, Western cartoon influences, and even minimalist Scandinavian approaches to cute typography. Accessibility Improvements Newer kawaii fonts are being designed with better accessibility in mind, ensuring they remain cute while meeting readability standards for users with visual impairments or reading difficulties. Conclusion: Embracing the Kawaii Font Revolution Kawaii fonts represent more than just a design trend – they’re a bridge between cultures, a source of visual comfort, and a powerful tool for creating emotional connections with audiences. In a world that often feels harsh and overwhelming, these adorable typefaces offer a gentle reminder that design can be both beautiful and kind. Whether you’re a hardcore anime fan looking to create authentic Japanese-inspired designs, a brand seeking to connect with younger audiences, or simply someone who believes the world needs more cuteness, kawaii fonts have something special to offer. The key to using kawaii fonts successfully lies in understanding their cultural context, respecting their origins, and applying them thoughtfully to create designs that truly embody the spirit of kawaii – making the world a little brighter, a little softer, and a lot more adorable. So go ahead, embrace your cute side, and let these kawaii fonts add some much-needed sweetness to your next design project. After all, in a world that could always use more kindness, what could be more perfect than typography that makes people smile? Final Tip: Remember that the best kawaii font is one that feels authentic to both the aesthetic and your project’s needs. Choose with your heart, but design with your head, and you’ll create something truly magical. Zoe Santoro Zoe is an art student and graphic designer with a passion for creativity and adventure. Whether she’s sketching in a cozy café or capturing inspiration from vibrant cityscapes, she finds beauty in every corner of the world. With a love for bold colors, clean design, and storytelling through visuals, Zoe blends her artistic skills with her wanderlust to create stunning, travel-inspired designs. Follow her journey as she explores new places, discovers fresh inspiration, and shares her creative process along the way. 10 Warm Color Palettes That’ll Brighten Your DayThere’s nothing quite like the embracing quality of warm colors to make a design feel inviting and alive. As someone...How to Upscale Photos Without Blurriness or PixelationMaking a small picture larger without it turning blurry or blocky is called ‘image upscaling’. Suppose you make a small...The Influence of Font Size and Weight on Cognitive LoadAs designers, we obsess over kerning, color palettes and grids, but how often do we stop to consider how our...

Each music streaming service varies in terms of its features and its interface, but unlike the video streaming apps, the actual content selection is broadly the same across them all: You get access to tens of millions of tunes, on demand, across all of your multiple devices.With that in mind, it doesn't make a lot of sense to subscribe to multiple music streaming platforms. People are far more likely to make a choice between them, find their preferred service, and then stick to it—and once you're invested in terms of playlists and listening history, it's not easy to leave.But I'm signed up to not one, not two, but three music streaming services—and I'll try and explain why I stay active on all of them. If you've only ever stuck with one option, you might not know there are actually some key differences between them, and different ways that they're all worth the money.Admittedly this isn't going to be right for everyone, and it's definitely expensive. As a tech journalist I get to write about these different streaming apps for a living, which helps justify the cost, and your mileage may vary in terms of whether the differences between these platforms make any difference to you.Before we get into the three streaming services themselves, a shout out to a fourth service, Last.fm: It tracks listening across multiple music platforms, which means I can look back on my musical tastes and how they change over time, even as I'm bouncing among three separate subscriptions.Apple Music: the legacy choiceI've been listening to digital music through iTunes since the start of this century, which is a big reason why I continue to rely on Apple Music for most of my day-to-day listening. I still have a carefully curated collection of local digital music files, and Apple Music can blend these seamlessly with new music that I stream on-demand. For bands I really like, I still buy the music—both to support them, and just in case one day I want to stop renting music (and movies, and TV shows).The other major reason I use Apple Music above every other streaming service is the control you get over your library and over your playlists: There are algorithms here, of course, and music recommendations, but I'm much less reliant on them. Apple Music is a throwback in terms of how you can organize the music you like and determine what you listen to, rather than just opening up an app and clicking play on whatever auto-generated playlist looks most appealing. Apple Music supports smart playlists. Credit: Lifehacker Smart playlists are an important part of this experience, too. They let you build playlists based on your library, based around a whole host of criteria: total plays, date, genre, rating, the last played date, artist, and more. They update in real time, so a "songs I haven't heard for six months" playlist will constantly refresh as you listen to it and the metadata updates.I've spent more time than I care to admit curating numerous smart playlists. They let me balance new music with old music, prioritize my favorites while still adding in more obscure cuts, and mean that forgotten tracks that I haven't heard for a year or more will still occasionally pop into my queue without me having to dig for them. If I ever go down to just one music streaming service, this is the one I think I'd keep.YouTube Music: the widest choiceYouTube is the opposite of Apple Music in some ways, because I'll often just click on a music video I like and see where the recommendation algorithm takes me. YouTube probably knows my musical tastes better than any other app or platform, because of the hours I've spent clicking around on those brightly colored thumbnails, and it's great for discovering new bands and new songs.It's an easy, sit-back-and-listen experience, one that works everywhere: web browsers, TVs, phones, and tablets of any description. Just about every device can run YouTube. And any listening I do on YouTube is synced to YouTube Music (while all of my YouTube Music playlists are also accessible through YouTube)—I can switch between an audio and video experience as needed. YouTube Music offers a wealth of music choices. Credit: Lifehacker That's convenient and accessible, and on top of that there's more music on YouTube Music (via YouTube) than anywhere else: live versions, b-sides, alternative takes you can't find anywhere else, obscure gig recordings made by fans, and all the rest. There's a depth and a breadth here that Apple Music and Spotify can't match.Another feature I like about YouTube Music is being able to queue up different playlists on different devices—even in different browser tabs. On my laptop I can have a new music mix (for entertainment) and a lo-fi chill mix (for concentration) available in neighboring browser tabs, and switch between them with a click. If I then go out in the car I can listen to a third YouTube Music playlist, without losing my place in either of the playlists I'm working through back at home.Spotify: the power user choiceFinally, I subscribe to Spotify is that, well, even with everything I've already said about its competitors, it's the best music streaming service. It has the most polished apps, with the most features available—like the Blend playlists you can use to combine your musical tastes with those of a friend to create a single mix, and the AI DJ you can get to queue up tracks for you.When it comes to third-party speakers, apps, and AI assistants, Spotify is the music streaming service most likely to be supported: It doesn't favor particular devices or platforms, as Apple Music and YouTube Music do. It's available everywhere, and it's the easiest for sharing music with other people, because almost everyone uses it. Spotify remains the most polished, feature-rich option. Credit: Lifehacker I use Spotify most for new music. It has a fantastic range of recommendation options, including the Release Radar playlist (new music by artists I like), and the Discover Weekly playlist (a weekly mix of new and old music, including some artists I know and some I don't). I also enjoy all the weird and wonderful playlists other Spotify users curate and make public for everyone else.What's more (and despite what I said about YouTube Music), sometimes I do want a playlist that I can transfer from my laptop, to my smart speaker, to my car, and all the way back again, without skipping a beat—and Spotify handles this better than both Apple Music and YouTube Music.

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Macworld The Finder is the main user interface for managing files on the Mac. Think of it as the starting point for navigating macOS–it’s like the Home Screen on an iPhone and iPad. You probably don’t give the Finder much thought, but it’s one of the most important places on your Mac. Because of that, you should make the most of that time. You can tweak the Finder so it better suits the way you do things, and there are a few tasks you can do within the Finder instead of in an app. Here are 10 things you should know so you can get the most out of the Finder. 1. Finder and Desktop explained The Quick Take function in the Finder lets you see a preview of a file. Foundry This is an explanation of terminology. Before you can master the Finder, it helps to understand the difference when, say, you’re looking up support documents on Apple.com or reading a how-to on Macworld. You hear people refer to the Desktop on the Mac. The Desktop and the Finder are two parts of a whole. The Finder is actually an app that runs all the time. The Desktop is a component of the Finder; to paraphrase Apple, the Desktop is the space between the menu bar at the top, and the Dock at the bottom (or the bottom of the screen, if your Dock is not located there or is hiding). If you click on the Desktop, notice that the app you end up in is the Finder. So, if you’re working with someone on a Mac and you’re told to go to the Desktop or Finder, they’re usually referring to the same thing. Now, the Finder and Desktop differ in functionality. You can place files on the Desktop, and you can set the Finder to display icons so you can access storage devices, servers, and more. The Finder itself offers other functions, such as windows to navigate and manage files, Quick Look (select a file and then press the spacebar to see a preview of it), syncing with an iPhone, and more. 2. Add multiple Desktops Navigate between Desktops in Mission Control. Foundry Now that you know what the Desktop is, you might now know that you can have multiple versions of it. It’s a great way to organize the window and app clutter that easily builds up. It’s especially useful on single-display Mac setups. To launch another Desktop, you use an app in macOS called Mission Control, which is opened by: Pressing the F3 key or pressing Control+Up Arrow Swiping with three fingers upwards on the Magic Trackpad Double-tap with two fingers on a Magic Mouse Dragging a window to the top of the screen When you enter Mission Control, a bar replaces the menu bar at the top of your screen. It will list the Desktops you currently have, which will be just one to start. Move the cursor over the bar, and it expands to show thumbnails of your Desktops. To add another Desktop, click on the “+” icon on the right side of the bar. (Apple’s documentation refers to a Desktop in Mission Control as a “Space” and that bar as the “Spaces bar.” But I’m going to keep calling them Desktops to minimize confusion.) Once you’ve created more Desktops (the limit is 16), you can move app and Finder windows below the bar to specific Desktops, making your workspace much more organized. For example, I usually have two Desktops, one with the apps for writing Macworld articles, and a second one with just email and Slack. Sometimes I launch a third Desktop for image, video, or audio editing.  To move between Desktops on a Magic Trackpad, swipe with three or four fingers left or right. On a keyboard, press Control+Left or Right Arrow. 3. Customize what you see Customize the Finder in Finder > Settings. Foundry Because a lot of users don’t think of the Finder as an app, they don’t realize that the Finder has Settings. When in the Finder, click on Finder in the menu bar, and you’ll find Settings. This is where you can make the most adjustments to customize the Finder to your preferences. As you can see above, I very rarely use Tags, Music, or Movies, so I have unchecked them to hide them in the Sidebar section. 4. Right-click to see more RIght-click on the FInder icon in the Dock to see more options. Foundry Clicking on the Finder icon in the Dock brings the Finder to the forefront and opens the Finder Window. However, if you right-click (or Control+click, or do a two-fingered click on a Magic Trackpad), you’ll find more options available to help navigate your Mac. It’s a useful tool for those times when the Desktop clutter is a total mess. 5. Take Action Finder Quick Actions allows access to Finder extensions that can be installed by the apps you use. Foundry When right-clicking a file in the Finder, the contextual menu that appears offers several options for you. One of them is Quick Actions, which are tasks you can do based on the file type. For example, Quick Actions for a graphic file may have options for Rotate Left, Covert Image, Remove Background, and more, without the need of opening an app. Not every file type has Quick Actions available. There isn’t a place like the App Store where you can get more Quick Actions. These are provided by the apps you install on your Mac. For example, if you install Pixelmator Pro, it offers its own Remove Background Quick Action. You can turn on/off Quick Action functions in System Settings > General; scroll down to the Extensions section, find the Finder section, and click its “i” icon. A list of Quick Actions will appear with switches to turn them on/off. 6. Add a widget Desktop widgets provide instant access to information you constantly want.Foundry About two years ago, Apple introduced macOS Desktop widgets. This is a feature brought over from iOS and it allows you to put app widgets that stay on your Desktop for quick access. For example, the Calendar widget shows your daily schedule without needing to open the Calendar app, which you can open by clicking the widget. Widgets that are made for iOS are brought over the macOS, so the available widgets you have are based on what iPhone and iPad apps you have. You can see a list of widgets by right-clicking any space on the Desktop and selecting Edit Widgets in the contextual menu. They can live on your Desktop or in the notification sidebar. 7. Show the Clipboard What’s in your Clipboard? Find out through this option. Foundry What would happen to our productivity if cut/copy and paste disappeared? It’s a standard function on any computing device, but have you ever wondered what exactly is currently in the clipboard? You can find out in the Finder. Go to Edit > Show Clipboard, and a window pops up to display the clipboard contents. Most of the time, you can see what’s in there–if it’s text, you’ll see it, if it’s an image, it’s there. Some items don’t appear, for example, when I copy a video clip in iMovie, the Clipboard is blank and the identifier at the bottom says Clipboard contents: unknown. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing in the Clipboard, it just means it’s not being displayed. This probably isn’t a feature you’ll use often, but it might be a good idea to check your Clipboard to make sure any private information isn’t in there. However, there isn’t an easy way to clear the clipboard. You can copy blank space from a document, and it will look like there’s nothing in your Clipboard, or copy something of no value. You can erase the Clipboard in the Terminal by entering pbcopy < /dev/null and then pressing Return. Also, when you restart your Mac, the Clipboard gets wiped out every time. Third-party Clipboard utilities allow you to manage Clipboard contents and also have other features like multiple clipboards and the ability to save clipboards after the Mac restarts. 8. Rearrange the sidebar Rearrage the Sidebar by clicking and dragging. Foundry In Finder Windows, the Sidebar lists areas where you will access files. By default, they’re listed alphabetically within their sections, but you can rearrange them by clicking and dragging. You can even move the sections; if you want to move, say, the iCloud section to the bottom, just click the iCloud header and drag it to the bottom. You can determine what items appear in the Finder Settings under Sidebar. For example, if you don’t want AirDrop in the list, you can go into Settings and uncheck the AirDrop box. 9. Supercharge your folders Set up scripts that can apply automated actions to a folder. Foundry There’s a little-used feature in the Finder called Folder Actions Setup and what it does is that it performs actions on files within the folder. For example, you can set up a Folder so that when you place images into it, the images are automatically converted to jpegs. To use Folder Action Setup, right-click on a folder and select Folder Action Setup from the pop-up menu. macOS includes a few actions you can use, most of them for use with images, such as format conversion, rotation, or flipping. There is one action that makes an alert appear whenever a folder has a new file added to it. These actions are AppleScripts; a script is a method of automating a set of tasks. You can create your own scripts and use them in Folder Action Setup if the ones in macOS aren’t what you need. Check out our guide to using Folder Action Setup. 10. Use an iPhone or iPad to take photos, scan, or sketch Use your iPhone to take a picture that is saved directly to the macOS Desktop. Macworld Right-click anywhere on the Desktop, and in the pop-up menu, select Import from iPhone or iPad. A pop-up appears that offers options to Take Photo, Scan Documents, or Add Sketch. Pick one and the Camera app opens for photos or scans, or a sketch app opens. Anything you create with those apps is saved to the Mac’s Desktop.

Adobe Premiere Pro earns its status as industry-standard video editing software thanks to its familiar nonlinear editing interface, excellent performance, unmatched ecosystem of tools, and powerful capabilities. The massive application benefits from straightforward import and export experiences, while AI-powered auto-captioning, text-based video editing, and many other features keep it on the cutting edge. Premiere Pro earns our Editors' Choice award for professional-level video editing software. If video editing is more of a hobby for you, check out our Editors' Choice winner for enthusiasts, the less-expensive yet feature-packed CyberLink PowerDirector.Pricing: Subscription RequiredPremiere Pro is available by subscription only. It costs $22.99 per month with an annual commitment or $263.88 per year up front. A month-to-month option with no commitment goes for $34.49 per month. A free trial lasts just seven days.You can also get Premiere Pro as part of the complete suite of Adobe Creative Cloud professional applications that includes After Effects, Illustrator, Photoshop, and the rest. That costs $59.99 per month with an annual commitment, $659.88 per year up front, or $89.99 on a month-to-month basis. Business customers pay more for either package, at $37.99 per person per month for the single app or $89.99 for the whole suite. The Business version adds collaboration options, enhanced support, and management features. Education users pay less, starting at $19.99 per month for the whole suite for the first year and then $34.99 per month after that.Premiere's subscription pricing means the immediate dent in your pocketbook isn't as noticeable compared with when you had to plunk down $1,000 all at once to buy a perpetual license. A subscription model also means that the app gets regular updates with improvements and new features. For comparison, Apple's Final Cut Pro carries a one-time cost of $299. DaVinci Resolve charges $295, though you should first try its very capable free version. The nonprofessional programs for consumers who enjoy creating dazzling videos without the steep learning curves hover around $99 for a one-off purchase. That's what you pay for Adobe Premiere Elements. Pinnacle Studio Ultimate lists for $129.99, while CyberLink PowerDirector Ultimate costs $139.99 one-time or $74.99 per year for a subscription. A less-expensive tier of editors runs about $70 one-time, including Corel VideoStudio Pro and Filmora.(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)Can Your PC Run Premiere Pro?Premiere Pro runs on macOS 10.15 or later and Windows 10 (64-bit) version 22H2 or Windows 11. On Windows, it requires an Intel 6th-generation or newer CPU or an AMD Ryzen 1000 Series or newer, 8GB of RAM (16GB recommended), and a 1,920-by-1,080-pixel display. On Apple computers, Premiere Pro requires macOS 12 or later and an Intel 6th-generation or newer CPU, but also supports Apple silicon natively.When you install Premiere, you also get Adobe Media Encoder, which converts output to common formats for online and broadcast. It also enables batch processing and lets you keep editing during rendering processes.(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)What’s New in Adobe Premiere Pro?Adobe updates Premiere Pro every month or two with new tools, interface changes, and performance improvements. The biggest new announcements involve generative AI tools that can extend clips and search for media based on AI analyses. Here's a list of the important recent feature updates available for Premiere Pro (in order of importance):Generative Extend. This is the big AI-powered feature Adobe has long promoted. Available in the 25.2 release version, it lengthens your clip when you need to fill brief moments in your timeline.Media Intelligence. Premiere Pro indexes all your media with AI analysis, letting you later find any clips, sections of clips, or other media, based on images or sounds (including speech).Caption Translation. This feature lets you automatically translate either auto-generated or imported captions into a choice of 27 languages. Automatic Raw and Log Footage Conversion. Premiere Pro recognizes all major raw and log formats and automatically converts them to the color space you're using. Three new wide-gamut color spaces make everything look better on-screen.Support for MKV. The open-source codec has long been popular among file sharers. Premiere Pro users can now play and edit this content.Content Credentials Support. This important initiative allows creators to maintain ownership of their work and lets them tell AI bots not to train using it. Read my take on the initiative.Dynamic Waveforms. I was surprised that Premiere Pro didn't already have this feature since it has long been available in other video editing apps. It just means that dragging the waveform up or down in the timeline makes it larger or smaller.More Sample Media. This is great for learning how to use new features. Once you start up the app after the recent update, you see a project that shows you how to use Generative Extend.Previous recent updates of importance include:Audio Auto-Tagging and Enhanced Speech. Premiere Pro can detect and tag ambient audio, dialogue, music, and special effects. The app surfaces relevant controls for these sound types in the Essential Sound panel. The AI-powered Enhance Speech tool automatically cleans up unwanted audio noise.Automatic Transcription and Text-Based Editing. Premiere Pro can transcribe spoken audio in your clips and lets you edit—that is, split, merge, move, or delete—segments of video based on the transcription. Background Auto-Save. You can set Premiere Pro to auto-save in increments down to a minute. This works in the background without interrupting your work. A Dashboard for background processes shows your saves and other activities. A Recovery Mode lets you restore your project after a program crash or revert to a previous project state.Free Stock Sound Effects. Previously, Premiere Pro inexplicably didn't offer any stock sound effects, only background music. You now have many choices, including car doors slamming and explosions.Motion Graphic Template Views. The Essential Graphics panel is gone (you use the Properties panel for many of its functions), and there's a panel called Graphics Templates.Productions. Premiere Pro now uses a three-level nested hierarchy for editing: Productions, Projects, and Sequences. Productions comprise sets of Projects, which in turn can contain multiple timeline Sequences. You can move or copy media between Projects within Productions by dragging and dropping it.Interface and Ease of Use: Continual ImprovementsPremiere Pro has an attractive, flexible interface, and I'm a fan of Adobe's simplifying changes over the years. The startup view helps you quickly get to recent projects, start new projects, or search for Adobe Stock footage. The dark program window makes your clips the center of attention. It now has just three main modes (in addition to the Home screen): Import, Edit, and Export. A button or menu choice in Edit mode has a good selection of workspace layouts for Assembly, Editing, Color, Export, and more. You can pull off any of the panels and float them wherever you want on your display(s). It's also possible to create content bins based on search terms.By default, the editor uses a four-panel layout, with the source preview at the top left, a project preview at the top right, your project assets at the lower left, and the timeline tracks along the lower right. You can add and remove control buttons to taste; Adobe has removed a bunch of elements over the years for a cleaner interface. Since many editors rely on keyboard shortcuts like J, K, and L for navigating through a project, fewer buttons and a cleaner screen make a lot of sense. It's a very flexible interface, and you can undock and drag around windows to your heart's content. Here's another helpful feature: When you hover the mouse over a clip in the source panel, it scrubs through the video.(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)Premiere Pro is touch-screen-friendly, letting you move clips and timeline elements around with a finger or by tapping buttons. You can also pinch-zoom the timeline or video preview window. You can even set in and out points with a tap on thumbnails in the source bin. When you click on a media thumbnail, you get a scrubber bar and can mark in and out points right there before you insert the clip into your project. Premiere gives you several ways to insert a clip into your sequence. You can click the Insert or Overwrite buttons in the source preview monitor, or you can just drag the clip's thumbnail from the media browser onto the timeline or the preview monitor. Holding Command (or Ctrl on Windows) makes your clip overwrite the timeline contents. You can even drag files directly from the OS's file system into the project.The media browser also has tabs for Effects, Markers, and History, the last of which can help you get back to a good spot if you mess up. Markers, too, feature improvements, with the ability to attach notes and place multiple markers at the same time point. Markers can have durations in frame time codes, and the Markers tab shows you entries for every marker in a clip or sequence. Clicking on a marker entry jumps you right to its point in the movie.Any device that can create video footage is fair game for import to Premiere Pro. The software can capture from tape, with scene detection, shuttle transport, and time-code settings. It also imports raw file format from pro-level cameras like the Arri Alexa, Canon Cinema EOS C300, and Red Epic. The software supports resolutions of up to 8K. Of course, you can import video from smartphones and DSLRs. For high-frame-rate video, the program lets you use proxy media for faster editing.You can apply color labels to your clip or open the Metadata panel to view and apply tons of XMP information about a clip, but there's no simple keyword tagging capability. Productions, Projects, Sequences, Libraries, and Bins are available to organize your media.If you’re moving up from the consumer-level Adobe Premiere Elements, you can import your projects, especially since they use the same .PREL file format. But you still might lose some effects, even things like image filters and motion tracking. A project consists of one or more sequences, which in turn contain your clips. There are sequence templates for HDR, high-resolution, and social videos.Semantic Search With Media IntelligenceOne thing that has been missing from the editing interface is a permanent search box for finding commands, content, or help; other major apps, including Adobe’s Photoshop, include this. The Home screen has a search box, but its results are sometimes unhelpful. (Credit: Adobe/PCMag)However, you can now search for any of your media with the Media Intelligence search tool. It's in the top-right corner of the program window, a standard magnifying glass icon with the universal "spark" elements that designate the presence of AI. As you might expect, the tool had no problem coughing up clips with your search text in their captions or metadata. And it did a fine job finding clips with eye close-ups or water bodies. But, for some reason, it couldn't find clips based on color. I searched for "yellow" and "orange" to see if it could find my clips with those colors prominently in the background, but it found nothing. Trimming Project Clips: All the Options You Could WantPremiere Pro has four edit types that sound like they belong at a water park—Ripple. Roll, Slide, and Slip—along with a Razor tool for splitting clips and a Rate Stretch tool for speeding up or slowing down a clip to fill a specific length of time. You can easily access all of them at the left side of the timeline. The cursor shape and color give visual cues about which kind of edit you're dealing with. One welcome capability is that you can make edits while playback is rolling.(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)With the Ripple and Rolling edit tools, holding down the mouse button while moving a clip edit point (or double-clicking on an edit point) opens a view of both clips in the preview window—a helpful touch. If you double-click on the edit point, it switches to Trim mode. This shows the outgoing and incoming frames, with buttons for moving back and forward by one frame or five, and another to apply the default transition.As with Adobe Photoshop image layers, layer support in Premiere Pro lets you apply adjustments. These affect all tracks below them. You create a new adjustment layer by right-clicking in the project panel. Then, you drag it onto a clip on your timeline and start applying effects.Generative ExtendAs mentioned, Generative Extend is the feature Adobe is most excited about. It makes use of the emerging field of generative video AI courtesy of Firefly. As its name suggests, this feature lets you extend a clip, though just by up to 2 seconds. You can extend audio by a more practical 10 seconds, however. Perhaps that short video time limit signifies that Adobe intends this as a pro video editor tool rather than something that can generate full AI videos with deepfake potential.The feature adds a new basic editing tool to the toolbar along with Razer, Ripple, Slip, and the rest. Below is how it looks in the interface. When you hover over it, you see a tooltip explaining the new feature.(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)You might also notice a white gap in the timeline above. You can use the Generative Extend tool to drag the clip to the left or right and fill the empty space. When you do this, a timer shows you the progress—it's not an instantaneous operation and requires sending the clip to Adobe's servers. After using the tool, you first see an "Uploading" message on the clip, then "Generating," and finally "AI-generated." After it showed this last message, my clip didn't appear extended in the timeline. Instead, I saw a placeholder image from Adobe telling me that it was generating the AI clip. After a few more seconds, my test clip was extended to fill the gap and showed realistic motion. You can see the added frames below as the playhead crosses the section marked AI-generated:The result in my test is pretty convincing, but I wouldn't trust it to extend a clip of a person speaking. Other video AI generators go much further. For example, Sora can create up to 15 seconds of video and lets you describe what you want to see. That's even possible with the consumer-minded Filmora.Adobe's Firefly can extend clips, too, but it requires you to spend credits each time. Generative Extend is free for a limited time in Premiere Pro, but Adobe doesn't specify when the free lunch ends. You can see the list of credit costs and how many each account type gets on this intimidating FAQ page. Generative Extend can produce frames at up to 4K resolution, but those cost more credits than lower-resolution ones. Transitions and Effects: Abundant OptionsEnthusiast-level video editors tend to have a huge number of transitions, so it might surprise you that the professional-grade Premiere Pro includes just 47 (you can install plug-ins for more). Many professionals find a lot of transitions tacky, so when they want to add a fancy transition, they build one in After Effects or buy polished ones from third parties.Premiere Pro has all the video effects you'd expect—colorizing, keying, lighting, and transforming. You can apply an effect just by double-clicking. A search box makes it easy to find the effect or transition you need.The Warp Stabilize feature (originally from After Effects) is very effective at smoothing out bumpy video. This feature now works quicker than before. In testing, it got through a 1:33 (min:sec) clip from a moving tram in 2:38, smoothing out all but the biggest shakes. You can adjust the amount of cropping, make the borders auto-scale, and tweak the smoothness percentage. A cool option is No Motion, compared with the default Smooth Motion. Using it with Stabilize Only (as opposed to adding Crop, Autoscale, or Synthesize Edges) resulted in a weird (and unusable) zooming in and out with rotation in my test, so be careful with the settings you use. The result with default settings is noticeably smoother than with Final Cut Pro in testing.Color AdjustmentsThe Lumetri Color manager in Premiere Pro brings the program in line with Photoshop for video. These tools give you a remarkable amount of color manipulation, along with a great selection of film and HDR looks. Black point, contrast, exposure, highlights, shadows, and white balance adjustments are available—all of which you can activate with keyframes. It includes Faded Film, Saturation, Sharpen, and Vibrance adjustments, too. The curves and color wheel options are impressive and include a Color Match feature with face detection and comparison views. There's also a very cool Lumetri Scope view, which shows the current frame's proportional use of red, green, and blue.Recommended by Our Editors(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)You can opt to apply any of these effects only in masked areas, which you can create from polygons or by using a pen tool. For motion tracking, however, you need to look to After Effects, so those masks won't automatically track, say, a face.(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)Auto Color is something we've seen in photo editing software for many years, but Adobe claims the tool analyzes an entire clip using its patented Sensei AI technology to improve contrast, exposure, and white balance. Unfortunately, it works only on a per-clip basis; it would be nice if you could apply it to your whole sequence, that is, the group of clips and overlays that comprise your digital movie. The above screenshot shows Auto Color's adjustments, which you can then tune to your taste. In testing on several clips, this tool improved both the color and the lighting in testing with several clips but occasionally pumped up saturation too much. Unfortunately, Premiere lacks video noise reduction features like those in CyberLink PowerDirector and DaVinci Resolve.Auto ReframeA good chunk of today's video content ends up on social media, which means different aspect ratio formats. Auto Reframe uses Adobe’s Sensei AI technology to identify what's important in the frame and then crop to 16:9, square, vertical, or custom aspect ratios to match the output device or service. You can use the tool on individual clips or entire sequences.(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)You can either drag the video effect onto a clip or choose Auto Reframe from the Sequence menu. Then, you can choose the output aspect ratio, motion tracking, and whether you want clip nesting.Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and Vimeo, as well as broadcast outlets, all have different spec requirements, so the feature saves video producers the work of having to custom edit for each. At the very least, Auto Reframe gives producers a starting point; its Nested option means you can adjust what it creates to taste.Apple has a similar tool in Final Cut Pro called Smart Conform. It’s nearly identical to Auto Reframe. Smart Conform also bases the crop on your project aspect ratio setting rather than creating new aspect ratio versions to taste. One thing I prefer about Final Cut’s feature is that it lets you see how the effect worked by showing the full frame outside the automatically cropped area.Collaboration: Excellent FeaturesPremiere Pro lets you use Creative Cloud Libraries to store and organize assets online, and the Team Projects feature lets editors and motion graphics artists using After Effects collaborate in real time. When you create a project, you simply choose Team Project and designate team members. When you're happy with an edit, tap the Publish button so the other members see it. Any Premiere user can sync settings to Creative Cloud, enabling editing from different PCs and locations. (Credit: Adobe/PCMag)These collaboration features also mean you can go to any machine running Premiere and see your workspace when you sign in. Getting this kind of collaboration and workflow capability in Final Cut Pro requires third-party extensions. Similarly, consumer-targeted products like PowerDirector don't have any collaboration features to speak of. Premiere Pro also has a Share button for Team projects, which lets you invite collaborators to your project via email.Frame.io IntegrationAdobe acquired Frame.io in 2021, and Premiere Pro subscribers now get a Frame.io account with 100GB of online storage for five projects. That's separate from the 100GB of Creative Cloud storage. After removing the Frame.io panel from Premiere Pro in favor of a plug-in, Adobe has reinstated it in the current version, with choices for Legacy, V4 Comments, and V4 Preview.(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)Note that you need a Version 4 frame.io subscription to use the new features. The upgrade process isn't as simple as it might be, either: you have to wait for an email from frame.io for it to finalize. In its favor, the newer version of the service adds features like connected comments, metadata, and user permissions. You can attach comments to specific time codes in the sequence, which is a big help to editors. You can't simply log in to your frame.io account with your Adobe account through Creative Cloud, however. Multi-Camera Editing: Powerful Tools Multicam support in Premiere Pro can accommodate an unlimited number of angles, limited only by your system capabilities. Final Cut Pro lets you work with only 64 angles, though most projects won't need more. In Premiere, you select your clips and choose Create Multi-Camera Source Sequence from the right-click or Clip menus, and then choose a syncing method. The program does a good job of syncing clips based on their audio, which is helpful for DSLR-shot clips that have no time codes. As in Final Cut, a Multi-Camera Monitor lets you record angle changes as the composite video plays, either by simply clicking on the angle's tile or the corresponding number. You can then adjust the cuts with the normal editing tools. Adobe adds an option for multicam editing preference: Ripple trim adds edits to keep both sides in sync.Titles and Captions: Ample SupportAs you might expect, Premiere Pro has a wealth of text options for titles and captions. It can import SRT or XML files. For titles, you get a great selection of fonts, including Adobe TypeKit fonts. You can set crawling, leading and kerning, opacity, rolling, rotation, texture, and more. As in Photoshop, you can apply strokes and shadows to any font. Stroke styles let those with very particular typographic needs choose the type of caps the strokes have, including bevel, miter, and round. Advanced text animation, however, once again falls to After Effects. For comparison, enthusiast-level programs like PowerDirector and Pinnacle Studio build in a good selection of title animations.(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)Automatic TranscriptionsOne of the coolest recent features in Premiere Pro is Transcribe Sequence. This feature uses speech recognition technology to produce a text panel from spoken words in the sequence. It can impressively separate multiple named speakers. You can then jump to the place in the timeline by tapping on words in the panel, and pauses are marked with [...], letting you find and remove them easily. The panel lets you edit the text and combine or separate text blocks, and its CC button automatically creates a caption track using the transcription. (Credit: Adobe/PCMag)The caption editing panel lets you redistribute words among the captions, each of which becomes a separate timeline clip. You can split or merge caption clips and edit the style of all the separate caption clips at once. Then, you export to an SRT or text file or burn the captions into your video project.Automatic Caption TranslationOne welcome new feature is AI translation of captions in 27 languages. This works either with auto-generated captions or imported caption files. Click the translation icon in the Captions panel, and you get a choice of source and target languages. You can also drop down more choices to reveal time and character limits for generated timeline entries. When Premiere Pro finishes processing everything, you see a second caption track in the timeline right above the previous one. This lets you display more than one caption language at once. In my testing, the feature worked quickly and accurately. Keep in mind that Premiere Pro sends data to Adobe's servers for processing.(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)Text-Based Editing: A Whole New Streamlined ApproachAn extension of the auto-transcription capability is the option to edit based on the transcripts. You can select text in the transcription panel and move or delete it, and Premiere Pro adjusts the video clip accordingly. The program lets you automatically highlight filler words (um, ah) or pauses and then delete them all at once, which can be a huge convenience for interviews or expository videos. One issue I have is that the skips are abrupt. Adobe should include an improved version of the Morph Cut transition (similar to Final Cut Pro's excellent Flow transition) in the Text-based Editing interface to fix this. Unfortunately, the current version of Morph Cut caused artifacts in my video. (Credit: Adobe/PCMag)DaVinci Resolve now offers text-based editing capabilities, too, though Apple has yet to announce them for Final Cut Pro.360-Degree VR Video Editing: Decent SupportPremiere Pro lets you view 360-degree VR footage and change the field of view and angle. You can view this content in anaglyphic form, which is a fancy way of saying you can see it in 3D using standard red-and-blue glasses. You can also have your video track the view of a head-mounted display.(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)The program, however, couldn't open my Samsung Gear 360 stereoscopic footage unless I converted it to an equirectangular format (this is the only VR format Premiere supports). Corel VideoStudio, CyberLink PowerDirector, and Pinnacle Studio can all open the footage without this conversion. You can't see the spherical view alongside the flattened view as you can in those apps, either, but you can easily toggle back and forth between these views if you add the VR button to the preview window. Helpfully, Adobe’s tool lets you tag a video as VR so that Facebook and YouTube properly recognize it.Audio Editing: Deep OptionsPremiere Pro's Audio Mixer shows balance, pan and VU meters, clipping indicators, and mute/solo controls for all timeline tracks. You can use it to make adjustments as the project plays. Premiere Pro automatically creates new tracks when you drop an audio clip in the timeline, and you can specify types like standard (which can contain a combination of mono and stereo files), mono, stereo, 5.1, and adaptive. Double-clicking the VU meters or panning dials returns their levels to zero.The audio meters next to your timeline are resizable and let you solo any track. The program also supports hardware controllers and third-party VSP plug-ins. If you have Adobe Audition installed, you can round-trip your audio between that and Premiere for advanced techniques such as Adaptive Noise Reduction, Automatic Click Removal, compression, Parametric EQ, and Studio Reverb.(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)For background music, you get a large selection of clips from Adobe Stock (some of which are free). A relatively new Free switch lets you see only those clips you don't need to pay for. The program now has a full selection of sound effects, such as car door slams, crowd cheers, and explosions. You find these within the Essential Sound panel, which also lets you designate your audio tracks as Ambience, Dialog, Music, or SFX—either manually or via the AI-powered Auto Detect tool. (Credit: Adobe/PCMag)Switch to the Browse tab to find audio stock, which you can filter by mood or search by term. None of these auto-fits your project length automatically, but you can use the Remix trimming tool to do that. Professionals will likely have a full Creative Cloud subscription, which lets them get sounds through Adobe Audition. The SFX clips include detailed options—not just "car door slam," for example, but specific options like a 1941 Cadillac or 1975 Ford F150 Pickup. The recent Enhance Speech tool does a remarkable job of removing background noise when you are editing a piece shot in a noisy environment. Essential Sound provides another very useful capability: auto-ducking for ambient sounds, which pulls back background noise during dialog or sound effects.Export: Many Output OptionsA clear Export mode button lives at the top of the editing interface, in addition to the Quick Share button at the top right. The simplified Export interface in Premiere doesn't mean you can't go into every little detail about the file you need to render. You now see a list of common output targets along the left—Media File, YouTube, Vimeo, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook—along with Adobe's own Behance and Creative Cloud online services. Importantly, you can export to as many as you want with one press of the Export button by toggling several choices. You can also send your rendering job to Adobe Encoder if you want to batch render and get back to editing in Premiere Pro without waiting for the export to finish.(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)The categories in the middle section of the interface (in the above screenshot) all allow for fine-tuning, thanks to drop-down arrows. For example, click on Video here, and you can set not only the frame size, frame rate, and aspect ratio but also the bit rate, color space, and time interpolation. For the rest of us, the updated interface thankfully hides those brain-hurting settings.Premiere Pro gives you most formats you want, and for more output options, Adobe Encoder can target Blu-ray, DVD, Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo, and many other devices. Encoder lets you batch encode to target multiple devices in a single job, such as mobile phones, iPads, and HDTVs. Premiere can also output media using H.265 and the Rec. 2020 color space, as can Final Cut. However, Final Cut requires you to buy the separate Compressor 4 add-on ($49.99) for this functionality.(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)The Quick Export option lets you tap the share icon at the top right, and you can produce the project with minimal fuss using a choice of seven preset formats: Match Source—Adaptive High, Medium, or Low Bitrate; 4K, 1080p, 720p, and 480p.A new option during export is to embed Content Credentials metadata. If you use AI generation tools in any of your project's assets, you see a simple check box called Export Content Credentials, which attaches the credentials to the exported content. Anyone can then check the credentials on Adobe's Content Authenticity site's Inspect page.Performance: Fast Render SpeedsPremiere Pro takes advantage of 64-bit CPUs and multiple cores. For render speed testing, I have each program I test join seven clips of various resolutions, ranging from 720p up to 8K. I then apply cross-dissolve transitions between them and note the time it takes to render the project to 1080p30 with H.264 and 192Kbps audio at a bitrate of 16Mbps. The output movie is just over five minutes in length. I ran this test on a Windows 11 PC with a 3.60GHz Intel Core i7-12700K, 16GB RAM, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, and a 512GB Samsung PM9A1 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD.Premiere Pro sits near the top of the leaderboard, with an impressive time of just 35 seconds. Premiere periodically auto-saves your work, in case you forget to save explicitly. If you do encounter a crash, it presents you with a Reopen button in a red warning message upon restart.

Alt-Tab was among the first Windows keyboard shortcuts I learned when I first used a PC over two decades ago, right after Ctrl-C (copy) and Ctrl-V (paste). Alt-Tab opens the app switcher, which lets you quickly bring a different app to the foreground. You can use it to quickly swap between two open apps, or to cycle between all of your open apps. But what you might not know is that the app switcher can so a lot more than that. I'm here to walk you through the best tricks hidden in the commonly used Windows feature.Cycle through open appsHold down the Alt key and keep pressing Tab to open the app switcher and cycle through all your open apps. Once you release the shortcut, the selected app will come to the foreground. You can also cycle through this list in reverse order by holding Alt-Shift and pressing the Tab key repeatedly.Stop the app switcher from auto-hidingThe app switcher's temporary nature is a bit annoying sometimes. The moment you release Alt-Tab, the app switcher disappears. You can get around this by pressing Alt-Ctrl-Tab. Now, you're free to release the keyboard shortcut and keep the app switcher happily floating above all your open apps. Use arrow keys to cycle through your list of open apps, or use the mouse to directly pick the app you need. To dismiss the app switcher, simply click outside of it.If this shortcut is too difficult to press, try using the Alt key to the right of the spacebar along with Tab. So, press Right Alt-Tab and it'll also stop the app switcher from automatically hiding.Use the app switcher to quit appsOnce you have the app switcher open, you can use it to quit apps, too. Press Alt-Ctrl-Tab to open the app switcher, then move the cursor to any of the thumbnails on screen. You'll see a small X button in the top-right corner of each thumbnail. Click the X to quit that app. Alternatively, you can use the arrow keys to select any app and press the Delete key to quit the selected app.Enjoy a full-screen view Credit: Pranay Parab If a small floating window is not sufficient for you, you can make the app switcher full-screen as well. Press Windows-Tab to open the Task View, which shows a list of all open apps in full-screen. You can use this to switch to any app or to quit apps. Press Esc to leave this view.Try a third-party customization toolWhile Windows' defaults work well, you can also consider using third-party apps to customize the app switcher's theme. Both Winaero Tweaker and AltPlusTab let you change the look and feel of the app switcher. You can use these apps to change the switcher's opacity, fonts, appearance, and more.