6 Upgrades for Your Creative Suite

It’s inspiring to see just how many creatives are out there now. It’s true that sites like YouTube and Twitch have been more independents a platform to put out content that fits their particular niche, even for specific pursuits like fishing rod guides or comedy videos. 

Yet more than just these platforms, more and more people are thinking about starting their own small business or creative studio, leveraging such skills to help them. Of course, this also encompasses a wide range of possibilities. One person may wish to become a travel documentary maker, another a wedding photographer, some a foley artist for video products.

No matter what side of the professional line you fall on, working on developing your semi-professional creative suite can help you develop a richer palate of tools to draw on. In this post, we’ll discuss some of the most capable:

Graphics Tablets

A graphics tablet can be great if you do any kind of digital drawing, illustration, or photo retouching on your computer, as even if you’re not a highly skilled illustrator It’s basically a flat surface you can pinpoint works with more accurately than a mouse. The pressure sensitivity on these devices is a also great for any visual work.

You can also get small, affordable tablets that connect via USB, or you can splurge on a screen tablet where you draw right onto the glass, which feels a lot more natural and direct when you’re doing detailed work. Using one of these will immediately make any photo editing or retouching easier to handle, saving you hours of fiddling your usual mouse. Most consider this a necessary tool for artists.

Creative Software Suites

No matter what creative path you're taking, you're going to need the right software to do the heavy lifting, so think of this as the main engine of your entire creative studio. If you’re a video editor, that's something like Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve, and for graphic designers, it’s usually the Adobe apps, but there are plenty of cheaper and very capable alternatives out there now too, so shop around.

Whatever you go for, pick a suite that covers several bases, like video editing, photo manipulation, and audio work, because you never know what adjacent skills you'll need next for a project. Many companies offer subscription models now, so you don't have to buy the software outright, which makes getting started much easier on your finances while you build up your client base and portfolio.

Drone Cameras

If you're interested in travel documentaries, real estate photography, or cinematic outdoor videos, a decent drone camera is a must-have piece of kit for your setup. Because they keep level, they can give you aerial but stable shots, and they’re so much easier to fly now than they used to be in the past.

Modern drones are also quite light and stable, and they can capture beautiful 4K footage without much effort from you, which is fantastic for solo creators. Just remember to check your local airspace regulations before you fly it anywhere, because you definitely don’t want to accidentally land yourself in trouble with the local police because you were too close to an airport or sensitive area. If you're looking for where to Learn More about the DJI Neo 2, you'll see why these lightweight models are so popular with creators.

Green Screens & Key Lighting

A green screen might seem a bit over the top for a small studio, but believe it or not, they’re actually quite a baseline tool. If chroma key’d correctly, it lets you change your background to literally anything you want, whether that's a professional office or the surface of Mars, which is incredibly useful for variety and presentation be that through taking pictures or streaming online.

Pairing that screen with a proper key light is essential to balance out the shadows, and this is the main, bright light that illuminates your face or your subject perfectly. Match that with a soft light to remove some of the background work. Don’t worry, you don't need giant studio lights; even a decent ring light or a softbox will have an obviously beneficial impact.

Digital Audio Interfaces

If your content means you need to start recording voices, music, or sound effects, you'll need a digital audio interface to connect your nice microphone to your computer. Your computer's internal sound card just isn't built for high-quality audio recording, and you shouldn't rely on it for anything important you plan on sharing online with an audience, as clipping and bad audio processing can impact the quality of your work.

Such an interface takes the professional audio signal and converts it into a digital one your computer understands, and it also cleans up the signal to reduce unwanted noise and distortion right from the source. You can get a simple two-input model for not that much at all, but it’ll completely improve the quality of your voiceovers and recorded music. You can also buy audio convertors to give you clean gain on condenser mics if required.

Soundproofing

No matter how nice your microphone or DAW is, if your room echoes or suffers a fair bit of background noise, your audio quality will always sound amateurish and distracting to your listeners. Soundproofing your space isn’t necessarily just focused on adding foam inside the walls or renovating the space, as you can do a lot with a little here.

To start, adding soft surfaces like rugs, thick curtains, and foam panels to the walls is great, as it helps absorb reflections and eliminate any echo sound from your recordings. You can also move your recording desk away from windows or loud appliances like a refrigerator or air conditioning unit. Clean audio is often much more important than high-resolution video for keeping an audience engaged in your work believe it or not. An audience can deal with a 720p YouTube video, even today. They won’t put up with audio buzzing or crackles.

With this advice, we believe you’ll find it easier to upgrade your semi-professional creative suite going forward.

*Disclosure*: This post is a sponsored content guest post with paid link placements. Please do your own research before making any purchase decisions from any links in this article.