5 things I love about Apple’s new Creator Studio – and one I don’t

Apple Creator Studio is more of a collection of apps than one single offering. It puts its biggest applications for video, audio and photo editing into a single monthly or yearly subscription to put all the tools at your disposal.

There have always been both pro and amateur solutions for creative work. For video, iMovie provides a free solution while Final Cut Pro caters for the pro, and for audio, GarageBand is the consumer option while Logic Pro is more advanced. For most users, the free options are more than adequate, with editing now built into the Photos app and the office suite of Keynote, Pages and Numbers providing your presentation, word processing and spreadsheet options.

The Creator Studio, then, is for professionals, or at least those wanting professional results. It combines Final Cut Pro, one of the best video editing options available, with Logic Pro, a leading audio recording, editing, and mixing suite. Pixelmator Pro is an image editor that combines photo manipulation with graphic design and illustration, as an enhanced version of the free Pixelmator Classic. There are also versions of Keynote, Pages, and Numbers included in the package that offer more premium features than the free versions.

The subscription is designed for both Mac and iPad use, with all applications available for both platforms. Also included are three Mac-only apps: Motion lets you generate animation, Compressor provides output options for your videos, and Main Stage is designed for live music performances.

With such a comprehensive offering, it’s no surprise that it has garnered comparisons to Adobe’s Creative Suite. This also offers video, audio and photo editing, plus web and design tools in a more à la carte form. Premiere, Audition and Photoshop are largely equivalent to Apple’s offerings, though aside from Acrobat, Adobe doesn’t cover office products in the same way.

I spent a week trying out the new features both on iPad and on Mac to see how it performs. These were the five features that really stood out.

1. Beat detection in Final Cut Pro

Whatever video you’re creating, a soundtrack can really add to the effect, and a good editor always takes the music into account when cutting clips. When a scene changes on the beat, or you get a quick succession of clips that match that beat, it really lifts the video. What Final Cut Pro now offers is a way to make this process easier.

This isn’t a completely automated process, as you might expect, but it does take the hard work out of the edit. With your clips on the timeline and the soundtrack below it, selecting beat detection analyses the track and places markers on the timeline for the beat. You can then very quickly adjust the length of your clips, or slice up longer clips, to switch on those beat markers. The result is very effective.

2. Generative session players in Logic Pro

There are some newer tools in this version of Logic Pro, including the ability to import a video in order to create your own soundtrack, which is very cool. However, my favourite feature here remains the generative session players, which were introduced in version 11 last year.

This all starts with a chord track, which Logic Pro can generate from your first recording – whether that’s a guitar track, piano or other instrument. You can then fine-tune the chord track if needed to make sure it matches your intent. Then by adding a new track, you can introduce a session player, in the form of a drummer, bassist or piano player. This will follow your chord structure, tempo and time signature to create the relevant notes to play along.

It’s a very quick way to build up a full recording from a single track, and allows you to get a really professional finish in minutes.

3. Mock-ups in Pixelmator Pro

Pixelmator Pro is quite different from straight photo editors, as it feels more like a publishing tool. Yes, there are all the photo editing capabilities, but its strengths lie in creating pieces that are either ready for print, for online or for presentation.

Because of this, Pixelmator makes it really quick to create posters and social media posts, thanks to the included templates. One of the most interesting options though, is what it calls mock-ups. This is an easy way to display your created photo or graphics on a range of products.

The layers are already set up in such a way that, once you select your mock-up picture, you can just replace a layer with your creation in a single click, and then adjust the sizing to make it look how you want it. Mock-ups include t-shirts and bags, device screens, bottles, mugs and other product packaging, book covers, magazine covers and more.

4. Enhanced slideshow creations in Keynote

One of the biggest upgrades to the versions of Pages, Numbers and Keynote in Creator Studio is the Premium templates. These not only look great, but they also come with an option to generate your slides using what it calls Intelligent Content Creation.

This allows you to add the title and key points for the presentation, like speech notes. It then uses AI to summarise these into a number of slides and lays them out for you. You still need to then go in and adjust, as well as add images, but it’s a quick way to get started.

5. Content Hub for Pages

Another feature shared across Pages, Keynote and Sheets is the new Content Hub. This gives you access to royalty-free stock images, which can be used in your presentation, report, newsletter or whatever it is you’re creating. There are terms for image use of course. You can’t use them for corporate logos or trademark items, or use them on their own, outside of the program. However, they are still valid for commercial use in whatever you create – so you could use an image as part of a book cover.

Should I buy it?

The Creator Studio is available now from the App Store for iPad and Mac, priced £12.99 / $12.99 per month or £129 / $129 per year. Considering the price of the Adobe offerings and the individual prices of the included apps here, this is extremely good value for money. It’s also good to see that you can still buy the individual applications if you only want one of them.

Creating separate premium versions of Pages, Numbers and Keynote does feel a bit strange, though. These feel like a different offering to the main editing apps here (Logic Pro, Final Cut Pro and Pixelmator Pro). It’s a shame if the free versions of these don’t benefit from at least the AI generation tools.

There’s also a lack of a dedicated photo app here. While Pixelmator Pro is competent for editing, it needs an equivalent of Adobe Lightroom for the professional photographer. Apple used to offer Aperture, which was an excellent photo tool, and the Photomator tool has been a popular replacement. It would be great to see a Photomator Pro added to this package in the future.