August, 2007
Class Act! It's exciting when the newest version of a product that you've had the pleasure to use has so many tremendous new additions/upgrades to it as Adobe After Effects CS3. It's powerful integration across the board with the different Adobe products makes AE CS3 more exciting and effective.
With it's new 2D and 3D compositing features, animating anything and everything is possible. The 3D feature includes moving animation along the X, Y, and Z coordinates.
And then there are the shape layers with features such as Pucker and Bloat, Zig Zag, and Repeater with the addition of the Star. You can import files and text into AE CS3 from Illustrator, modify and animate the layers.
Or how about the all the hundreds of visual effects resources and greenscreen removal.
You can view all the new and standard effects directly in Bridge and see just how it looks on your AE document.
Brainstorm is a really cool feature that allows you view a multitude of variations on layers. It takes your creativity and gives you many more choices.
The new Puppet tool is so amazing. If you have anything you want to animate such as a character, you can add joints to it make it move anyway you want.
Clip Notes are an added benefit in that it helps track progress and can be exported in a PDF file with video embedded in it. Once they have been exported they can also be imported back into AE CS3 at the exact same point they were exported from.
Flash is such a popular program and because Adobe now owns it, AE can export SWF files directly into Flash without any problems.
There is even more precise and powerful color management tools available for use in film and video.
It's impossible to evaluate just how powerful this newest version of After Effects CS3 really is without coming to the conclusion that you just have to have it in order to stay up with creativity and technology. It's a resource that undeniably too awesome to be able to cover in one review.
Windows
- Intel® Pentium® 4, Intel Centrino®, Intel Xeon®, or Intel Core™ Duo (or compatible) processor
- Microsoft® Windows® XP with Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista™ Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise (certified for 32-bit editions)
- 1GB of RAM for DV; 2GB of RAM for HDV and HD
- 3GB of available hard-disk space plus 2GB of space for optional content (additional free space required during installation)
- 1024x768 monitor resolution with 32-bit video card; Adobe recommended graphics card for GPU-accelerated playback
- For OpenGL support: Adobe After Effects supported OpenGL 2.0 card (NVIDIA recommended)
- DVD-ROM drive
- QuickTime 7.1.5 software required to use QuickTime features
- Internet or phone connection required for product activation
- Broadband Internet connection required for Adobe® Stock Photos* and other services
- For recommended graphics cards and compatibility lists, see the OpenGL page.
Macintosh
- PowerPC® G4 or G5 or multicore Intel processor
- Mac OS X v.10.4.9
- 1GB of RAM for DV; 2GB of RAM for HDV and HD
- 3GB of available hard-disk space plus 2GB of space for optional content (additional free space required during installation)
- 1024x768 monitor resolution with 32-bit video card; Adobe recommended graphics card for GPU-accelerated playback
- For OpenGL support: Adobe After Effects supported OpenGL 2.0 card (NVIDIA recommended)
- DVD-ROM drive
- QuickTime 7.1.5 software required to use QuickTime features
- Internet or phone connection required for product activation
- Broadband Internet connection required for Adobe Stock Photos* and other services
- For recommended graphics cards and compatibility lists, see the OpenGL page
www.adobe.com
Copyright (c) 2007, Jacquelin Vanderwood, All Rights Reserved