MAX 2022: New After Effects features shipping and in public Beta

The latest release of Adobe After Effects is now shipping with new features to address the needs of modern motion designers. Highlights include Selectable Track Mattes, which make working with mattes dramatically easier while also keeping compositions smaller. Native H.264 encoding gives users the option to export files directly from After Effects. We’re also including over 50 new presets created by professional designers to accelerate common creative tasks. Everything in this release, as well as features now in public Beta, is based on feedback from the After Effects community.

Selectable Track Mattes

Matte layers define areas of transparency within a design, allowing users to combine visual elements with precision. Previously, motion designers had to create individual mattes for each layer to be matted, making compositions more difficult to manage. Now, with Selectable Track Mattes, users can apply one matte to as many layers as they want, regardless of where each layer sits in the layer stack. This makes it easier to edit mattes and make global changes, resulting in faster workflows with fewer layers.

“I am absolutely LOVING the new Selectable Track Mattes,” says motion designer Nick Greenawalt, who shares After Effects tips and tricks on his YouTube channel, Motion by Nick. “This feature cuts my layer counts significantly and makes projects so much simpler to navigate. New users will never know what it was like to work with hundreds of matte layers, but I sure do. Selectable Track Mattes is a game changer.”

Over 50 new Presets for faster animation workflows

Great motion design can require detailed work, often involving repeated steps. Presets help users save time by providing building blocks for common tasks. The new release introduces over 50 new animation presets, built by professionals and designed to make day-to-day tasks easier. They include fun, flexible animations for text, animated elements like map pins, convenient design elements like a 2D text box, and more.

Along with the new animation presets, After Effects 23.0 has new composition presets that make it easier to start new projects. Composition presets provide frame rate and frame size for common deliverable formats. There are new and updated presets for social platforms, vertical video, and Ultra HD.

Native H.264 encoding

New hardware-accelerated native H.264 encoding lets users export H.264 files directly from After Effects. Depending on the project and available resources, motion designers can export right out of After Effects or offload the task to Adobe Media Encoder so they can continue working on their compositions while exports are in progress.

Focused keyframe navigation

Perfecting an animation requires reviewing keyframes and making fine adjustments until the desired result is achieved. Keyboard shortcuts allow motion designers to navigate keyframes efficiently and new commands now allow users to focus on the keyframes for specific properties or layers. At any time, the user can switch back to navigating all of the visible properties or layers in their animation using the existing commands.

200 percent faster template performance in Premiere Pro

Premiere Pro now supports multi-frame rendering of animated title and motion graphic templates (MOGRTs) from After Effects. This improves preview playback and render performance by 200 percent or more, depending on the template and the user’s system.

More user-requested features in public Beta

We’ve also introduced a few more features in After Effects Beta

• 3D Model Import (Beta) is for motion designers who need to combine 2D and 3D assets in their compositions. With this functionality, users can Import 3D models into their projects without requiring third-party plugins.
• Context sensitive Properties Panel (Beta) shows you only the controls you need to edit the currently selected item. That means you spend less time twirling through layer hierarchies or opening different panels and more time creating.
• OpenColorIO and ACES color management (Beta) allows users to work at the highest levels of image quality throughout their pipeline using OpenColorIO color management, including Academy Color Encoding System (ACES) workflows.

Install the latest release of After Effects now from the Creative Cloud desktop application.

Learn more about the latest release of After Effects

Find out what’s new in the latest release of Premiere Pro