Adobe Unveils Creative Cloud Express, Template-Driven Design Tools

The mobile- and web-focused offering is for both professional designers and neophytes.

PC hardware is nice, but it’s not much use without innovative software. I’ve been reviewing software for PCMag since 2008, and I still get a kick out of seeing what’s new in video and photo editing software, and how operating systems change over time. I was privileged to byline the cover story of the last print issue of PC Magazine, the Windows 7 review, and I’ve witnessed every Microsoft win and misstep up to the latest Windows 11.

Adobe has been steadily moving from huge installed apps like Photoshop to a more web- and mobile-based app strategy, as evidenced by today’s launch of Adobe Creative Cloud Express.

The new offering provides thousands of highly customizable templates that can be instantly applied to a user’s own media. The whole idea is to let professional and nonprofessional creators produce social media-friendly, distinctive content for platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok.

The product offers "incredible levels of customization" and uses Adobe Sensei AI for much of its magic and simplification, said Adobe Chief Product Officer Scott Belsky.

Creative Cloud Express not only offers templates but also stock images from Adobe Stock. Searching for content and templates streamlines getting relevant assets. The service also allows for collaboration among multiple users through libraries, project syncing, and shared templates.

To accelerate content creation, Express lets users define a brand—with consistent colors and typefaces—to reuse on new projects. Users can easily output content in formats specifically optimized for the social media outlets.

In its announcement event, Adobe recruited several non-designers with products to sell, showing how they could create distinctively designed content to reflect their unique identities. Among these were 49ers tight end George Kittle and Momofuku restaurateur David Chang.

For those familiar with Adobe’s longtime free photo editor, Photoshop Express, this new offering is completely separate. Another similar preexisting tool is Adobe Spark, which had similar intentions. Adobe execs answering questions at the online unveiling noted that Express is a natural evolution from those previous efforts. A glance at the included Adobe Creative Cloud apps no longer lists Spark, so it seems that Express has replaced it.

What Is Spatial Audio for AirPods? How It Works and What It Sounds Like

Spatial audio brings head tracking and simulated surround sound to Apple’s AirPods and Beats headphones. Should you go out and buy a new pair just to get it?

I’ve been a contributing editor for PCMag since 2011. Before that, I was PCMag’s lead audio analyst from 2006 to 2011. Even though I’m a freelancer now, PCMag has been my home for well over a decade, and audio gear reviews are still my primary focus. Prior to my career in reviewing tech, I worked as an audio engineer—my love of recording audio eventually led me to writing about audio gear.

Spatial audio is an effect that gives the impression of sound coming at you from three dimensions. It’s common in gaming headsets and has been making inroads in other types of headphones, especially now https://jiji.ng/ that Apple is offering support for the technology through its latest pairs of AirPods and Beats. But what exactly does it sound like, and what do you need to experience the effect at its best? We’ve tested Apple’s spatial audio across every pair of headphones it works on, and have collected everything you need to know right here.

What Is Spatial Audio?

Spatial audio is an umbrella term for various spatial effects you can experience through headphones or speakers. For headphones, it’s a system that adjusts balance and frequency response for different sounds between your ears to give the impression of directionality, in some cases incorporating motion sensors and head tracking in the process.

Specifically for Apple devices, spatial audio is offered in four basic varieties:

Spatialized Stereo With Dynamic Head Tracking

Dolby Atmos With Dynamic Head Tracking

Spatialized Stereo is simply an effect applied to music that wasn’t mixed for spatial audio. It takes the stereo channels of whatever you’re listening to and puts different processing effects on it, in an attempt to massage some directionality out of the purely left-right mix. It can sound cool, but it can also sound pretty terrible (especially with music), and it’s definitely the least impressive type of spatial audio.

Dolby Atmos, on the other hand, is a technology that some music and plenty of films (and some TV shows) are now mixed with. Instead of simply mixing audio to 5.1 or 7.1 channels (the x.1 is the subwoofer, which isn’t directional), it maps individual audio sources to different positions in a 3D space around you. It’s meant to provide a much more immersive spatial feel for your home theater, similar to what you get in a theater or live space.

Film is where Atmos has seen the most use, but now artists are starting to mix music audio this way as well. The new James Blake record, available on Apple Music in Dolby Atmos, does indeed sound interesting with the effect turned on (but it also sounds fine with it off, and this is true of most music mixed with Dolby Atmos). The latest version of Apple Logic Pro includes mixing tools for both Dolby Atmos and spatial audio, so you can even make your own spatial music at home.

Keep in mind that Atmos is, at heart, a speaker technology, as speakers such as soundbars use angled drivers and acoustic reflections to facilitate height channels and incorporate additional satellites for true rear and side imaging. By comparison, headphones only have one audio source on each ear (we’ve seen a few "surround sound" headsets in the past that use individual drivers for different channels, but because headphones have no space for different sound sources to come from, they don’t work well).

Spatial audio for headphones attempts to achieve the same sense of directionality through some clever processing and tweaks, but you’re still getting a watered-down version of the effect on speakers, no matter what anyone tries to convince you. It may sound cool, but it’s not playing with the same tools a soundbar has at its disposal.

The head tracking aspect of spatial audio uses motion sensors built into earphones or headphones to actively pan the mix based on how you move your head, to give the impression that all of the audio sources are anchored at specific points around you. It’s perhaps a bit gimmicky, but it works. We’ve seen this sort of feature before on over-ear headphones and gaming headsets like the Audeze Mobius, Dolby Dimension, and HyperX Cloud Orbit S, but in-ear implementation is new. Adding head tracking to either Spatialized Stereo or Dolby Atmos creates a room-like feel to the audio experience, though you’re essentially layering effects (don’t worry, purists, you can simply turn spatial audio off completely).

You can choose between two spatial audio modes, Fixed and Head Tracked (Photo: Tim Gideon) (Photo: Tim Gideon)

What Works With Spatial Audio?

For Dolby Atmos content, almost any headphones you can pair with your iOS device will work support it (yes, we many any headphones, not just those from Apple or Beats). In the Music app on your iPhone, enable Dolby Atmos downloads and switch Dolby Atmos to Automatic, and whenever Dolby Atmos mixes are available, you’ll be listening in Dolby Atmos.

For Apple Music, headphones with Apple’s H1 or W1 chip automatically play Dolby Atmos audio by default when it’s available. This covers both Apple and Beats headphones, including all AirPods, as well as the Beats Flex, Powerbeats, Powerbeats Pro, and Studio Buds.

The list gets much shorter for spatial audio with dynamic head tracking. These headphones all have one thing in common: Beyond the inclusion of H1 or W1 chips, they have accelerometers that track the movement of your head.

Here’s the list of products you can use with spatial audio and dynamic head tracking as of this writing: