Adobe’s acquisition of grading technology firm Iridas will help it develop products to manage the shift towards RAW workflows, according to the company’s director of video product management Bill Roberts.

Under the deal, which was announced at the IBC trade show in Amsterdam last week, Adobe’s Creative Suite products will gain a set of tools to manipulate colour and light, including Iridas’ SpeedGrade for stereo 3D, RAW processing, colour grading and the finishing of digital content.

“You need tools to control colour and light downstream,” said Roberts.

“We looked at that trend and what we see happening with cameras like Red and Arri will flow downstream into SLRs, so we knew we had to go faster than we could by ourselves. It gives people a hint of where we are going with colour and light.”

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