Adobe After Effects CS4 has finally been released and is an essential, but expensive tool in any digital designer’s arsenal. Should you upgrade?
Here’s what Macworld have to say:
“After Effects CS4 represents one of the most significant and useful upgrades in recent history. The new version’s interface now integrates more seamlessly than ever into the rest of the CS4 suite. As the demand of most content creators and motion graphics producers increases significantly, it’s good to see that Adobe is still providing tools to help make the workflow easier and more intuitive, allowing the artist’s creativity to come to the forefront.”
Hear hear. I’ve ony just recently started playing with it, and getting used to the charcoal interface might take me a while, but the ability to import 3D layers from Photoshop is awesome and I look forward to the plethora of tutorials that will no doubt exploit this fact.
Here are six ways After Effects CS4 saves you time and money, according to Adobe.
1. Navigate your projects with unprecedented ease Time-saver
Locate any element in a comp or project fast with the new QuickSearch feature. Smoothly navigate between nested comps with the new Mini-Flowchart.
2. Take full advantage of metadata at every level of your project Time-saver
Retain asset metadata while you work in Adobe After Effects. Add new project-, comp-, and layer-level metadata to streamline project tracking, and automate asset auditing and many other tasks.
3. More easily track the motion of elements with Mocha for Adobe After Effects Time-saver
Use this powerful 2.5D planar tracking application from Imagineer Systems to track the motion of elements — even in challenging shots where elements move off-screen or where there is motion blur or excessive grain.
4. Discover more flexibility and control in 3D modeling Time-saver
Composite in 3D space more easily: Keyframe x, y, and z position values separately, and use the new unified camera, which makes cameras in After Effects work more like those in 3D modeling applications.
5. Smooth your workflow in dozens of ways Time-saver
Work more efficiently thanks to numerous improvements suggested by After Effects users. These include the Auto Resolution setting that renders only visible pixels when zooming in a comp view, streamlined memory and multicore processing preferences, longer layer names, and more.
6. Set up projects automatically for mobile device authoring Time-saver
Select devices in Adobe Device Central and automatically set up an After Effects project that targets those devices, with settings that match the targeted devices and the Render Queue set-up to output to the proper codecs and resolutions.
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