While the Stream Deck has proved to be an invaluable tool for many streamers, it’s also found plenty of fans among digital creatives, who have found the control board to be an excellent way to speed up a variety of creative tasks. It’s no surprise, of course, considering people have made accessories like dedicated Photoshop keyboards and Adobe Light Room controllers over the years. Now, one of the biggest PC accessory makers is getting in on the action with the Logitech MX Creative Console.
Designed for use with popular Adobe apps, the two-piece accessory offers multiple buttons and controls that you can use to quickly bring up functions and execute actions. No more memorizing three dozen keyboard shortcuts, clicking through five levels of menus, or using F1 to find a specific action each time out – this thing puts everything at your fingertips, readily accessible with just a few taps.
The Logitech MX Creative Console consists of two separate components: a keypad and a dialpad, The keypad comes with nine display buttons, as well as two system buttons that you can use to scroll through the various settings pages for the display keys. No word on how many pages you can define for each app, but we imagine it can handle a lot, since the keypad is meant to be plugged into the PC via USB-C the entire time.
The dialpad, on the other hand, is designed for wireless function, so you can freely position it anywhere it works best on the desk. It comes with a large dial, a scroll wheel, and a quartet of buttons. The dial can be programmed to do different things based on the app you’re using and the action currently being performed onscreen, so can use it to adjust brush sizes, control a slider, roll through timelines, and more.
The Logitech MX Creative Console comes with plugins for mot Adobe apps, such as Photoshop, Lightroom Classic, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition, and Illustrator. There are also plugins that let you use it with Ableton, Capture One, VLC, and Spotify Premium, so the usability of these consoles extend beyond your usual suite of creative apps. Need a plugin for a software that doesn’t come standard in the bundle? According to the outfit, they’re opening a marketplace specifically for selling plugins, so developers can make plugins for practically any software on any platform that the devices can run on, albeit they’re likely to come at an extra cost.
If there are no available plugins for a program, you won’t actually need to write one. Instead, you can simply customize the controls using the Logi Options+ app, which lets you assign any keyboard shortcut available in the app to the controls instead. Do note, if you’re going this route, so prepare to spend a fair amount of time playing around with it, since you’ll need to do it for every action in every app you’re going to use with the console. It runs on Windows and macOS.
The Logitech MX Creative Console is available now.
