With NAB 2026 just days away, Adobe has released details on a number of new AI-powered features, including the introduction of an all-new color mode in Premiere designed specifically for editors. Adobe also brought Premiere and After Effects to v26.2, injecting additional features into both. In addition to adding the Kling 3.0 and Kling 3.0 Omni video models, we’ve also added new features to Firefly Video Editor. We’ve also begun rolling out Frame.io Drive, allowing users to work with Frame.io projects as if they were stored locally.
New Color Modes in Adobe Premiere – Professional color grading for editors. (Source: Adobe)
It’s April, and Adobe is gearing up for the Adobe Summit Customer Experience Conference, which runs from April 19th to 22nd, and Adobe is gearing up to make a series of announcements for the creative community. But first, there’s NAB from April 18th to 22nd, with announcements across Adobe Premiere, After Effects, Firefly, and Frame.io to coincide with its broadcast-focused audience video segment.
As Adobe says, its ecosystem is built around the art of storytelling, from the first idea to the final cut, and that’s been the case for the past 40 years. And that’s what will guide our next announcement today. Over the years, major technological changes have occurred, from nonlinear editing and digital video to HD, 4K, real-time workflows, and even cloud collaboration. And of course AI.
“We have a clear and abiding view of AI: AI is a tool for human creativity, not a replacement,” said Megan Keene, director of product marketing at Adobe.
To this end, Adobe is integrating AI into video workflows to save users time and remove friction, allowing customers to focus on creativity and storytelling, and ensuring that creative ideas and vision always remain creative, the company said. And new announcements reflect that stance, with newly announced video innovations designed to evolve the way creators create, edit, and share videos.
adobe premier
Headlines related to Premiere focus on color grading, which Adobe claims is a reinvention of color for editors with the introduction of new color modes in Premiere (beta). Video editing used to be defined by cuts, but now editors do it all themselves from end to end, using tools designed for professional colorists, not editors. Adobe says Dubbing Color Mode is a first-of-its-kind color grading experience built from the ground up for editors, and the service is built specifically for the way editors actually think and work, making it an extension of editing itself, resulting in a shallow learning curve.
(Source: Adobe)
Color modes allow editors to see how colors flow throughout a project. Two-way color controls with an animated heads-up display show users exactly what’s happening while they work. Users can color grade a single clip or all clips at once using features called operations to grade, copy, and move color information between clips on the timeline. There are also style presets and collections of pre-graded color effects called modules. These are separate components that give users a highly professional colorist-level look that editors can use as needed.
Color Mode is currently in public beta for all Premiere subscribers and is expected to be generally available in late 2026.
Premiere has even more Premiere features, and version 26.2 is designed to speed up your workflow, including five new GPU-accelerated effects and transitions powered by Film Impact, including gradients, noise, channel blur, and more. There’s also a searchable sequence index panel for navigating complex timelines, making media management a breeze. The AI-powered object mask smoothing option released in version 26.0 allows for even more detailed mask adjustments with better edges.
Adobe also made relinking offline media faster and smarter, improving path tracking that works across drives and platforms, and helping you find and locate lost clips faster.
Premiere 26.2 is available now.
Adobe After Effects
Adobe has further expanded After Effects 26.2. This also includes new AI-powered object mattes that allow you to generate advanced mattes for motion design and compositing with just a hover and click. A new suite of AI-powered rotoscoping tools (Quick Selection Brush, Refine Edge Tool, and more) has been added to accelerate matte creation with faster and more accurate tracking.
adobe firefly
Firefly is Adobe’s all-in-one AI creative studio with over 30 industry-leading models, now enhanced with new features in Firefly Video Editor and the addition of Kling 3.0 and Kling 3.0 Omni video models. This allows users to generate, edit, and improve their work, all in one place.
Firefly video editor. (Source: Adobe)
Adobe has added audio upgrades directly within Firefly Video Editor, including Enhance Speech to automatically clean up dialogs. We’ve also integrated Adobe Stock directly into Firefly Video Editor, giving users access to over 800 million licensed assets, including videos, images, audio, and sound effects, without leaving their workflow.
These upgrades join recent additions like Quick Cut, which takes users from raw footage to structured first cuts in seconds, and Firefly Foundry, which tailors AI models to users’ unique branded content.
Adobe Frame.io
Frame.io is typically used at the end of production to review completed work. Now, Frame.io has moved upstream to the start of the work process with Frame.io Drive, a new desktop application that allows users to mount Frame.io projects directly on their computers and work with the media as if it were stored locally, without waiting for downloads or syncs. As a result, editors, designers, and motion designers all work on the same shared project, whether they’re using Premiere, Photoshop, After Effects, or other creative software.
Frame.io Drive brings you a single source of truth for your entire production. (Source: Adobe)
Once Frame.io Drive is mounted, your media appears in the Finder or Explorer and acts like a local file in the creative tools used by each person in the chain. Media is streamed in real-time, and local caching keeps performance fast even as file sizes grow.
Frame.io Drive features Frame.io Mounted Storage, a new architecture for real-time access to large media files. Both Frame.io Drive and Frame.io Media Storage are built on streaming technology by Suite Studios.
With Frame.io Drive, each team has one shared workspace that serves as a single source of truth for the entire production.
Frame.io drives and mounted storage will be available gradually, starting with enterprise customers, with customers on other Frame.io plans following shortly thereafter.
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