Pros & Cons: Creating Video With Adobe Spark

I finally tried Adobe Spark

Adobe Spark’s ads have been popping up all over the place. Big data marketing firms have correctly targeted me as a potential customer. I checked it out in passing a month ago and then returned last week to give a try. Below are two promotional videos I created using Spark and few words on what I discovered learning in the process. I’m by no means an Adobe Spark expert, just someone that has tried it a couple of times. I’m going to keep this post short since I am in favor of getting to the point over storytelling in some instances.

Here are some of Spark’s video main components that I’ll be mentioning.

Spark PROS

Here are some of the positive features that stood out to me.  Remember, I’ve only used a few times. With more use, I’m sure to discover more.

• Adobe Spark is free.
• You don’t have to download anything. You use it on their website.
• It has a very easy user interface.
• Their onboarding to create a video is great. They walk you all the way through the process and even give you suggestions.
• They have 24 preset video templates you choose to use. Each one has a specific font, background, and transition between slides.
• They also have many music options to pick from.
• I love that that they have “Find an Icon” or “Photo” button that quickly pulls up options to pick from.
• You can easily set the time length of each slide.
• They give you  4 different “Layout” styles for each slide allowing you to mix text with images in ways that they feel would best work for views.
• Dropping images onto slides from your desktop is a snap.
• Previewing your work can be done instantly with a preview button.
• When you are ready to share you are given a link to share and you can download the video to share yourself

Spark CONS

As with any software, Spark has a few cons.

• It’s free but to get their logo removed from the credits you have to be a subscriber of Adobe products which is expensive.
• You can move slides order around BUT I couldn’t in Chrome. Once I switched to Firefox I could do it.
• You can not change the font assign to each template.
• Text size can not be adjusted.
• Slide transitions are specific to a template and can not be changed.
• You can only change the background image if you use the full-screen + thing layout. Pretty limiting.
• Images can’t be moved around much on a slide. You’re confined to the 4 layout ways they think they should be placed on the slide.
• When ready to share their shareable link takes the user to Adobe to see the video, not ideal
• If you click share to social media buttons, it posts a still image and links you again to Adobe to see the video
• To get the video play in your feed, you have to download the movie and then upload it.
• Downloadable video is one size fits all at 1280×720 h.262. You’ll need to adjust it in another software if you’ll need another dimension.

Video Examples

Dino-Store App Promo Video created with Spark. Starting from scratch onboarding option and then selected template called “Wander.”  Each slide has one image, created in photoshop at 1280 x 720, and dropped into “Fullscreen + thing” layout. Everything looked great until the video had to shrink down in size for social media. The text became blurry.

Final Thoughts

Even though Spark has cons I will be using it again and again. It is very quick to use and does produce high-quality video quickly. One of the big things I’m learning is that I need to avoid any small text on images, especially if the video is going to be sized down. If text is used, it should be generated by the software. Hopefully, Spark will add in more text editing options in the future.

Let me know if you have any tips on Spark that I missed. If you haven’t tried it, I do recommend giving it a shot. Here’s the link  Adobe Spark.