It's been an exciting day of new Adobe releases, and After Effects users haven't been forgotten. The new version of the motion graphics software will be released exclusively through the Creative Cloud - along with new versions of Photoshop (opens in new tab), Illustrator (opens in new tab), InDesign (opens in new tab) and Dreamweaver (opens in new tab), and will be called not, as we'd expected, CS7 but 'After Effects CC (opens in new tab)'.
That means you won't be able to buy the new After Effects in the shops, or download it for a one-off fee. You'll still be able to buy After Effects CS6, and Adobe will continue to provide bug-fixes and the like. But other than that, it's goodbye to boxed products and hello to monthly subscriptions: $19.99/£17.58 for After Effects alone or $50/$46.88 for the whole suite of tools.
So what will the new version of After Effects include? Here are some of the biggest updates:
- Live 3D Pipeline. As we reported last month (opens in new tab), you'll be able to use objects and scenes from rival 3D tool Cinema 4D directly as footage inside After Effects without rendering them first.
- A new 'Refine Edge' tool, which enables you to keep the details when separating complicated foreground elements like frizzy hair or motion-blurred edges from complex backgrounds.
- A major upgrade to Warp Stabilizer adds the ability to: choose which objects within a scene get stabilized; reverse a stabilization; and preserve a scene’s original scale to fix tricky shots such as aerial fly-throughs.
- A new 3D Camera Tracker makes it possible to reproduce the original camera movement in a scene so you can add new layers - including video and text layers.
- A new Pixel Motion Blur feature enables you to add or enhance motion blur for moving objects in live footage and rendered scenes.
In total, Adobe promises "literally hundreds" of updates and new features to its Creative Suite tools. So keep your eye on Creative Bloq over the coming weeks, and we'll bring you details of each and every one of them...
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What do you think of the Creative Cloud? Are you willing to pay a subscription for Dreamweaver and other Adobe tools? Share your views in the comments below!
