description: "Project — Multi-App Marketing Campaign — A single project that combines everything from Level 2: Photoshop non-destructive compositing and grading…"---

10 · Project — Multi-App Marketing Campaign¶

A single project that combines everything from Level 2: Photoshop non-destructive compositing and grading (Modules 1-2), automation (Module 7), Illustrator typography, gradients/mesh, and patterns (Modules 3-4, 8), and Premiere multi-cam, audio, and titles (Modules 5-6, 9). You'll build a small but complete marketing campaign — a product photo set, a poster, and a promo video — all sharing one visual system, the same way the Level 1 capstone proved out a shared Creative Cloud Library.

What you'll build¶

A batch-processed product photo set in Photoshop: several photos color-graded identically and watermarked automatically.
An Illustrator campaign background combining a gradient/mesh-shaded graphic, an outlined/warped headline treatment, and a repeating pattern element.
A poster in Photoshop combining a processed product photo with the Illustrator background and headline.
A short promo video in Premiere: cut from at least two synced camera angles (or simulated as two takes if a second camera isn't available), audio-mixed, and finished with an Essential Graphics title built from a Motion Graphics Template.

This mirrors real studio work: one campaign, several deliverables, built from a shared visual language rather than three unrelated files that happen to look similar.

Step 1 — Grade and batch-process the product photos¶

Take 3-5 product/subject photos (even phone photos of any object work for practice). Open one and build a grading pass using Camera Raw Filter plus a Curves adjustment on a Smart Object (Module 2).
Record an Action (Module 7) that applies an equivalent Camera Raw grade, adds your campaign watermark/logo via Place Embedded, flattens, and exports as a JPEG.
Run File > Automate > Batch with that Action across the full folder of product photos, saving to a new destination folder, so every photo in the set is graded and watermarked identically.

Step 2 — Build the campaign background in Illustrator¶

Design a background shape or panel and apply a gradient (Module 4) — convert part of it to a Gradient Mesh if you want a more dimensional, shaded look rather than a flat linear/radial transition.
Build a repeating pattern swatch (Module 8) from a small brand motif and apply it as a subtle texture or accent area, scaled independently of its shape with the tilde-drag technique.
Set the campaign headline, apply any OpenType stylistic feature the font supports (Module 3), then duplicate it, Create Outlines, and apply a Warp or Envelope Distort effect for a distinctive treatment rather than plain flat type.
Use the Appearance panel (Module 4) to add a second stroke or subtle drop shadow to the headline so it separates cleanly from the busier background beneath it.
Group the finished background+headline and export a flattened PNG (for the poster) as well as saving it into your Creative Cloud Library (Level 1, Module 9) as a Graphic asset.

Step 3 — Assemble the poster in Photoshop¶

Create a new Photoshop document at your target poster size (e.g. 1080x1350px for a social post).
Drag the Illustrator background Graphic in from your Library — it lands as a linked Smart Object (Level 1, Module 9).
Place one of the batch-processed, watermarked product photos (Step 1) as a Smart Object above it, and use a layer mask (Level 1, Module 6) to blend its edges into the background cleanly.
Add a final Curves or Color Balance adjustment layer (Module 2) over the whole composite, masked as needed, so the product photo and the Illustrator background read as one cohesive grade rather than two mismatched sources pasted together.
Flatten a copy and export as the final poster JPEG/PNG.

Gather footage from at least two angles of the same short moment (two phones, or a planned two-take setup) and build a Multi-Camera Source Sequence (Module 5), syncing by audio.
Cut between angles in multi-camera view for a roughly 10-20 second sequence, then Flatten the result once the cut is locked.
Apply Lumetri color correction (Level 1, Module 8) matching the mood of the poster's grade, and mix audio (Module 6): tag dialogue/music, enable ducking if music is present, and check final levels on Audio Meters.
Build a title/lower-third in Essential Graphics (Module 9) reusing your campaign's color and headline treatment, pin it with Responsive Design — Position, and add an opacity fade-in via keyframes.
Export the title as a Motion Graphics Template to your Library first so it's reusable, then export the finished promo as an H.264 MP4 at a size appropriate for where it will run (e.g. 1080x1920 vertical for social).

Step 5 — Review the campaign as a set¶

Lay the photo set, poster, and a frame grab (or the first few seconds) of the promo video side by side. Check:

Does the color grade feel consistent across the product photos, the poster, and the video?
Does the same headline treatment (font, OpenType feature, warp/outline style) appear identically wherever it's used?
Does the background pattern/gradient read as the same visual system across the poster and the video's title graphic?

If anything drifts, trace it back to whether that asset was pulled from the shared Library/Action/Motion Graphics Template versus recreated by hand in that specific app, and fix the source rather than patching the one deliverable that looks off.

Cheat sheet — project touchpoints¶

Deliverable	App	Level 2 skills reused
Product photo set	Photoshop	Camera Raw/Curves grade, Actions, Batch
Campaign background	Illustrator	Gradient/Mesh, Pattern, Outlined/Warped type, Appearance
Poster	Photoshop	Smart Objects from Library, layer masks, adjustment layers
Promo video	Premiere	Multi-cam sync/cut, audio mixing, Essential Graphics title

How It Actually Works¶

Every "consistency check" in Step 5 is really verifying that a shared reference resolved identically in each app, not that a human eyeballed a close match. The photo grade, the headline treatment, and the background pattern each trace back to one authoritative source: a recorded Action's parameters, a Library Graphic's version, or a .mogrt's exposed properties. When something drifts visually, the actual cause is always one specific link in that chain being broken — a photo processed by hand instead of through the Batch-run Action, a headline retyped in Photoshop instead of pulled from the Library Graphic, a title rebuilt from scratch in Premiere instead of dropped in from the exported .mogrt — which is exactly why "fix the source, not the symptom" is the right instinct: the visual mismatch is a downstream symptom of a specific reference having been bypassed somewhere upstream.
The photo set and the poster/video grades can drift for a structural reason even when every asset is correctly linked: RGB (Photoshop/ Illustrator) and Rec. 709 (Premiere/Lumetri) are different working color spaces evaluating the same numeric grade differently, as covered in this level's color-correction module — matching the mood across deliverables built in different apps means matching the intent of a grade (its direction and relative strength), not assuming identical slider values will render identically once decoded through a different app's color pipeline.
The whole campaign's reuse strategy rests on the same three reference mechanisms stacked together: Creative Cloud Library assets (cross-app, cross-document references resolved by asset ID and version), a .mogrt's exposed-parameter whitelist (a locked structure with a small set of editable hooks), and a Photoshop Action's recorded, replayable command sequence (deterministic operations re-applied to new source data). Each solves a different kind of "keep many outputs synchronized with one source" problem — asset identity, template safety, and repeatable batch transformation, respectively — which is why a real production pipeline layers all three rather than relying on any single one to do everything.
A batch-processed photo set inherits any grading error uniformly and silently across every file, because the Action has no awareness of per-photo differences. If the recorded Camera Raw parameters were tuned against one photo's specific exposure and white balance, running that same Action against photos shot under different lighting applies the identical absolute correction to all of them — correctly for the sample photo, and by exactly the same amount (right or wrong) for every other one, since the Action has no per-file adaptive logic, only a replayed fixed sequence of commands.

Exercise¶

Complete all four deliverables — photo set, background, poster, and promo video — as one connected campaign rather than four unrelated files. Confirm the grade, headline treatment, and background pattern are visually consistent across every piece by reviewing them side by side per Step 5.

Stretch goals¶

Export the campaign background's headline as a second, alternate-color Motion Graphics Template variant, and swap it into the promo video to compare which reads better on video versus in the static poster.
Extend the Batch/Action pass from Module 7 to also output a second, smaller size of each product photo (e.g. a thumbnail set) in the same run, using the Image Processor's multiple-format option instead of a second manual Batch pass.
Add a second multi-cam angle change and a Cross Dissolve transition (Level 1, Module 8) at the promo video's midpoint, timed to land on a matching cut in the campaign's visual rhythm (e.g. a beat where the on-screen title also changes).
Recreate the poster at a second aspect ratio (e.g. a square 1080x1080 version alongside the original 1080x1350) and confirm the Illustrator background's Responsive Design equivalent — rebuilding the layout so the shared Library graphic still reads correctly — holds up at both sizes.