Designers who work on films and video face a familiar loop: ask for frames, wait for a grade, build the poster, then rebuild it in five sizes, then redo all of it when the title, the credits or the edit change. cinemaOS puts design inside the film's project. Atelier, its design workspace, reads frames and stills straight from the cut and keeps layouts, type and motion editable next to the edit.
The jobs you actually do
- Pull strong frames from the film and develop them as key art.
- Lay out posters with a clear type hierarchy and grid.
- Build a title treatment and a release identity.
- Adapt one design to many formats for festivals, stores and social.
- Make press kits and longer documents.
- Animate titles and social versions of the artwork.
- Hand files to printers, platforms and clients.
How cinemaOS handles each
Frames and stills
Atelier Photo develops stills with Levels, looks and grain, and lets you compare Original, Split and After while you work. Paint soft light on its own layer without touching the source, as in Paint soft light on a separate layer. Our guide to making key art from your own frames covers choosing the frame.
Type and grid
Atelier Layout sets pages with a type hierarchy and a grid you can turn off to check the result. The Give a poster a clear visual hierarchy tutorial sets a headline and a supporting line and exports a PNG.
Masks and image treatments
Give a portrait a vector mask, test feathering, place the face with crop controls and layer shapes behind it. See Build a graphic image treatment with masks.
One design, every size
Set a brand kit once, with type, colors and logos, and apply it across the release. Duplicate a page and adapt the copies to 9:16, 1:1 and 4:5, or use Export All Aspects for a brand kit set. Watch Brand kit to every poster size and Adapt one design to three useful formats. The Journal explains brand kits for every aspect ratio.
Press kits and documents
Text frames can continue a story across linked frames, with an overset warning when text does not fit, and export as a PDF snapshot. See Let a story flow through linked frames.
Motion
Atelier's Video Composition room keyframes Position, eases the arrival and staggers layers, then exports an H.264 MP4. Start with Animate a title with two keyframes, and read simple motion graphics with keyframes.
Live titles in the edit
Titles placed in the Sequencer stay live: change a word or the typeface and the cut updates, with no render to redo. See Live titles that stay editable.
Where to start
- Download cinemaOS and start the 60-day free trial. No card is needed.
- Ask the editor for the project, or import a scene and pick two or three frames.
- Set a brand kit with the release typeface, colors and logo.
- Lay out the main poster on a grid, then adapt it to 9:16, 1:1 and 4:5.
- Animate the title for a short social version and export the set.
Then change the title and see how much of the set you need to touch. That is the test that matters for release work.
Honest limits
- cinemaOS is not a full After Effects replacement; complex motion and compositing belong in a dedicated tool.
- It does not open PSD or Illustrator documents as layered files. Import exported images instead.
- Retouching depth is not Photoshop's, and there is no template marketplace of Canva's size.
- There is no real-time co-editing; projects are local files.
- It is version 0.2, build 9, for Apple silicon Macs. Windows is planned for November 2027.
Our guide to graphic design software for filmmakers compares the options honestly.
FAQ
Can I set my own fonts and colors as a brand kit?
Yes. A brand kit saves type, color and logo choices and applies them in Atelier, so every poster size uses the same identity.
Can designs update when the film changes?
Designs live in the same project as the edit and grade, and titles in the Sequencer stay live. You still choose when to update a poster, but the source frames are always current.
Which formats can I export?
Images such as PNG and Web JPEG, PDF snapshots for documents, and H.264 MP4 for motion. Brand kits can export every aspect at once.