Adobe After Effects 7.0 Review

Nafisa Sabu
Graphic Designer
05.03.07

Adobe After Effects 7.0 Review

New Interface

Adobe’s fully featured motion graphics and animation studio has a fresh and clean new look. After Effects 7.0 is better then ever with a sleek new interface where there is a more color to separate sections from blending into each other. Everything has rounded corners and can be composed to fill up the whole screen with as many features as you would need and still have enough room to work, making the interface very flexible and easy to work with.

The software itself is not easy to master for beginners such as myself, but with the help of the getting started manual, tutorials, and templates the possibilities are really endless. Creating motion graphics and special effects with this editor can be a lot of fun once you get the hang of it.

Adobe Integration

I have to say how I love it when I have multiple editors that know how to work with each other. Adobe certainly listened to its users this time because there are many ways After Effects cooperates with other software in the Adobe family. Here are some of the ones I noticed:

• Premiere Pro 2.0; capturing video in AE that has been rendered in Premiere, drag and drop to and from after effects.
• Flash; FLV output format option
• Photoshop; import images from photoshop
• Illustrator; import vectors and files that are preserved
• Bridge; provides a way to browse animation that has come with the package or browse thru your own animation and graphics, also shows the animation preview

My favorite features

There seems to be a lot of different features in 7.0, there are many great tools that really spark creativity and enrich the experience of working with an editor like After Effects. These enhancements help support a better workflow and produce quality graphics. Some of my favorite features that I’ve come across so far include:

• Animated presets; there are hundreds of presets that help create visual effect while saving you time.
• Graphics Editor
• OpenGL; produces faster results and quicker rendering, also produces real time previews.
• HD color; High Dynamic color support with 32 bit gives crisp detail to videos and animation.
• Auto-save; lets you be worry-free. You can set how often you would like your projects to be saved automatically.
• Text tool; easy to use text tool lets you create and animate, text can also be applied from photoshop and created to animation presets.

Can it get any better?

After Effects is a great tool for the professional and beginner who is learning motion graphic & animation. My only improvement would be to include a better color correction tool for a future installment. Other than that, Adobe is certainly in the right direction with 7.0.