Is there enough new stuff in the Adobe After Effects 7.0 upgrades to warrant the cost? Fortunately, there are some excellent additions that will appeal to large and small companies.

Adobe continues to follow the pattern it began a few years ago, with products that are upgraded annually. As some of us have learned the hard way, some upgrades are worthier than others. The software marketing gurus surely know what they are doing, but what about the end user? Is there enough new stuff in these upgrades to warrant the cost? Large corporate customers have probably built these costs into their budgets, but what about small shops and independent users that don’t have the luxury of a fat budget? After Effects, Adobe’s long-standing compositing and animation market champion is no exception to this upgrade fever. Fortunately, there are some excellent additions to the latest version upgrade, After Effects 7, that appeal to both small and large companies. This review will focus on the PC version, while covering most of the new features.

The most immediately apparent change to this new version is the new user interface. Gone is the bland “looks like every other piece of software on your system” windows standard interface. In its place Adobe has given us a smooth gray, slightly beveled user interface. Another new feature of this new interface is that each window now has a home, where it locks into place so that it peacefully coexists with its neighbors. In the past one of the most frustrating things about After Effects has been its multitude of overlapping windows. These new windows, which Adobe calls “frames,” are better than the old free floating windows, but not a cure all. For one thing, users are still permitted to break these frames out and place them wherever they want, just like in previous versions of the software. Granted, users might be frustrated if they were not given this option, but many users will immediately default to this old behavior. Given some time the frames are appealing as they keep your workspace organized. The main issue is that After Effects is a deep program. As soon as users get into an even mildly complex project, they will find themselves having to scroll through frames often. In future versions Adobe should consider multiple monitors as something of a standard; perhaps even offer custom user interface options specifically for multiple monitor use. One great thing about the new interface is the workspace selector. This dropdown list allows users to choose a custom workspace on the fly. This is useful for those who are jumping from project to project or even moving between portions of a single project. In addition to a handful of useful presets, such as effects, animation and motion tracking, users may create their own customized workspaces, which, of course, can be saved and recalled for later use. The questionable execution of frames aside, the new user interface is pleasing to the eye and will be useful for those new to After Effects.

The most apparent change is the new user interface. Gone is the bland windows standard interface, and in its place is a smooth gray, slightly beveled user interface. All screenshots courtesy of Fred Galpern.

The most exciting change in After Effects 7 is the new graph editor. Computer-based animators rely on their graph editors more than any other tool in their toolboxes. Without a strong graph editor, manipulating animation can be tedious and time consuming. For years now After Effects has lagged in this area, but not anymore. The new graph editor allows users to have more control over their animation and more flexibility in tweaking that animation. Adobe has added some automatic color coding to help users notice at a glance what is happening with their animation. This may seem like a minor change but it is quite effective as your eye becomes trained to immediately go to the red number block, for example, when you want to make a change to the width scale value, and the green block when you need to change the height scale value. The graph editor frame can be switched to view different graphs. Users can choose between Auto-Select, Value, Speed and Reference graphs, all of which offer up focused, narrow views of the associated animation graphs. This feature allows users to quickly jump around and to manipulate the values that need tweaking. Users may also narrow the display of select properties for their entire graph by choosing to display only selected properties, only animated properties or all; another useful, time saving feature. Users can now use the Hand tool to move around the graph editor pane, as well as use their mouse wheel to do the same. This takes some getting used to, but it does speed things up. The graph editor update is one of the most appealing additions to After Effects 7.