What After Effects Features Have I Missed Since CS6?

[True-Kida]

Hello all,

I am interested in purchasing a perpetual license for After Effects CS6. I am curious however as to what all I would be missing in regards to features (as in what updates I will have missed) since that version of the software. If this question can even be realistically answered, I'd greatly appreciate any and all help.

Thanks  in advance,

--Masaomi Kida

[Mylenium · Accepted solution]

Well, the ugly blunt truth is that you probably won't miss much aside from specific CoDec support for some newer formats. Pretty much everything is a matter of "unless you have specific workflows that involve those tools, you may not care", meaning things like Refine Edges, the content aware scaling/ resize, refinements to the 3D tracker and Warp Stabilizer, mask tracker and a few other things. Everything else is too much in a state of flux to really add genuine production value, the many quirks and bugs will drive you insane at times and of course some features like the motion graphics templates are downright irrelevant if you don't have those projects where you need to churn out hundreds of lower thirds for editing in Premiere. Sadly, AE is just stuck in limbo and seems to move forward at snail pace, if at all these days. Too many grand promises that it doesn't live up to. Other than that of course one might be concerned about compatibility issues with CS6 on modern operating systems, which is something you should really research thoroughly.

Mylenium

[True-Kida]

Thank you so much! I generally edit in Sony Vegas and wanted to spice up my edits a bit. I'll look a little more into some of the updated features you mentioned to see if they're all that crucial. And I am so glad that you mentioned compatibility, as I am running Windows 8.1 and was thinking of updating to 10, which is not supported! Thanks again. You have helped me immensely in making a purchasing decision.

[Szalam]

I disagree with Mylenium a bit. While there are a lot of things I would like to change about how AE works and I agree with him on some of what he said, there are some things that have been added to AE that make it much better for me and what I do since CS6. Some are little workflow things and some are major features.

People use After Effects in many different ways, so what's useful to me might not be useful to Mylenium and what's useful to Mylenium, might not be useful to you. Buying CS6 outright can be quite expensive, so you should really look into this before you make a big purchase!

I am going to list some of the changes that mattered to me and let you decide for yourself.

• GPU-acceleration of Fractal Noise is really useful - even on my old GPUs it's twice as fast to render some of my projects with Fractal Noise! And the faster interactivity makes it much easier while I'm in the creative stage.
• The ability for effects that reference other layers to reference the effects and masks in addition to the layer source has REALLY cut down on how much precomping I have to do and I can work much faster when I'm making changes since I don't have to keep diving in and out of precomps. (Talked about on this page under Effect Layer Input Options) Huge!
• The Copy with Property Links and the Copy with Relative Property links functionality is really handy.
• The introduction of the Refine Edge and Refine Soft Matte tools really made the Roto Brush much more useful.
• If you have to scale up, there are better scaling options like bicubic sampling and the Detail Preserving Upscale effect.
• The mask tracker (which tracks masks) is very handy - especially when coupled with the Effect compositing options which let you isolate effects to masks.
• They added a keyboard command to snap the anchor point to the center of a layer's contents. This is a tiny thing, but so helpful. I use this all the time!
• If you start editing in Premiere Pro instead of Vegas (which you might as well do if you get a CC subscription), you can make your lower thirds in AE and then edit the text and colors in Premiere later without having to render anything in AE. This is much improved over the old way! Plus it's a lot easier to get your edits from your NLE to AE.
• If you ever get into expressions, I really like the new expression error handling.
• Lumetri Color
• You can set up templates for folder structure in your output templates! A simple thing, but so time-saving in a production workflow.
• Improvements to Warp Stabilizer were good (and they made several), but the new Camera Shake Deblur effect does a LOT to rescue footage that would otherwise be unusable.
• You can have scopes in AE now! This was a big deal while you're color grading.
• Something nobody talks about is the new panel stacking/soloing business in CC 2015 and later. When you go to use it, choose the "All panels" workspace at first. It's GREAT if your working on smaller screens (like a laptop)! That's what I built my MacBook Pro's workspace off of. (My Windows workstation has four monitors, so I have an entirely different workspace for it!)

In summary, I could not imagine having to go back to CS6. There are so many new features that have become indispensable to me!

And I haven't even mentioned all the benefits of Creative Cloud outside of After Effects!

• I love the Capture mobile app. You can make color themes while you're out and about and they're waiting for you back inside your AE library on your computer when you get home. (You can also use it to create LUTs and several other tasks.)
• TypeKit gives you access to a bunch of great, otherwise expensive typeface families.
• The assets in the CC app (images, clipart, etc.) can be quite useful (not talking about Adobe Stock either)

Ooh, and Character Animator is super fun just to play with even if you don't use it to work on anything.

Again, we all work in different ways, so, if what I've said doesn't interest you, you could look at the full lists of things that have been added to After Effects and see if anything in there piques your interest:

what’s new and changed in After Effects CC (12.0)

After Effects CC (12.1): what’s new and changed in this October 2013 update

After Effects CC (12.2): what’s new and changed in this December 2013 update

what’s new and changed in After Effects CC 2014 (13.0)

After Effects CC 2014.1 (13.1): what’s new and changed in this update

After Effects CC 2014.2 (13.2): what’s new and changed in this update

After Effects CC 2015 (13.5) is now available

After Effects CC 2015 (13.6) and Character Animator (Preview 3) updates now available

what’s new and changed in the After Effects CC 2015 (13.7) update

What's new and changed in After Effects CC 2015.3 (13.8) update

What’s New and Changed in After Effects CC 2017 (14.0)

January 2017 Update to After Effects CC Is Now Available (14.1)

After Effects CC (April 2017) In-Depth: New Features (14.2)

Hopefully that helps you.

[True-Kida]

Hey Szalam,

Thanks so much for that super detailed and elaborate post! I'm fairly new to editing and have only had experience with Sony Vegas and some much lower level programs. I've glanced over the feature differences on Adobe's site, but I'll take a more thorough look at them before making a final decision. Especially the ones you included as individual links! I know that sometimes the little quirks make all the difference as well when it comes to work flow. I'll sit and stew on this a bit more, but thank you again for giving me more to consider!

Aside: Character Animator has piqued my interest.

--Masaomi Kida

[Szalam]

What sort of stuff are you hoping to do with After Effects if you do get it? Maybe we can help you decide if it's worth the expense to purchase or subscribe at all.

[True-Kida]

Hey! So sorry I missed your response. I'm just going to be editing some anime clips really. Here's an excellent example of the sort of thing I plan to do: GLITCHED SMILE - YouTube

[P.M.B]

I had no idea about detail preserving upsacale.  You just changed my life. 

EDIT:  I played with a little.  Not really what I expected.

[Guest]

Hi everyone,

I am wondering which way to go with editing and making our business video, any feedback or advice would be very helpful.

I have Photoshop CS6 and Sony Vegas Platinum 11, we are looking to use AE Intro templates from Video Blocks and Motion Backgrounds etc.

Would I be better to use my old programs or look into purchasing Premiere Pro CC . I don't wish to spend unnecessary money where I can.

Thanks in advance

Samantha

[Roei Tzoref]

my advice is to subscribe to creative cloud and get all of the Adobe products. you get a fully functional 7 days free trial to test it.

[Guest]

Thanks, Roei, I will look into Creative Cloud