This upgrade version of Adobe After Effects CS5.5 will install only if you are a licensed user of Adobe After Effects CS4 or CS3.

Adobe After Effects CS5.5 software is the industry-leading solution for creating sophisticated motion graphics and cinematic visual effects. Transform moving images for delivery to theaters, living rooms, personal computers, and mobile devices.

Turn visual ideas into sophisticated motion graphics and cinematic visual effects for delivery virtually anywhere--from theaters and living rooms to personal computers and mobile devices. Adobe After Effects CS5.5 is the industry-leading, native 64-bit motion design and compositing software that offers an open-ended environment and a comprehensive set of tools to help you solve any creative challenge. Warp Stabilizer makes bumpy handheld shots smooth, Camera Lens Blur brings cinematic depth to footage and 3D motion design, and Roto Brush isolates foreground elements in a fraction of the time otherwise required.

FEATURES

Animate and composite flexibly in 2D and 3D-Solve visual problems quickly and efficiently using Adobe After Effects CS5.5 software by drawing on a comprehensive set of tools designed to help you meet any creative or technical challenge.

·    2D and 3D element combination
Work in 2D or 3D, or freely combine 2D and 3D elements in the same composition without having to change modes or redo your work. Default cameras and lights mean you don't have to set up additional elements just to add dimension to a layer.

·    3D camera data import
Import 3D camera and other 3D data from any 3D tracking software that can export Alias Maya ASCII (MA) files. You can also extract camera information from an RLA/RPF sequence and export After Effects camera data via a number of third-party additions.

·    Multiple 3D cameras per composition
Cut between multiple cameras in the same composition. Define unique cameras by angle of view, lens length, image area size, aperture, depth-of-field blur, and a host of other keyframable parameters.

·    Light falloff
Control how light intensity falls off across 3D distances, just as it does in the real world.

·    Streamlined design of 3D compositions
Benefit from numerous features to use 3D space inside After Effects, including the ability to keyframe x, y, and z values separately.

·    Multiple 3D lights with shadows
Add multiple lights to a scene and animate them. Choose from different light types, set their color, and define their shadow darkness and diffusion individually.

·    Material options for each 3D layer
Define how each 3D layer in a scene responds to lights, including control over size and intensity of the specular highlight.

·    Parenting
Work with parent and child layers. A child layer inherits all transformations applied to the parent, including anchor point, while maintaining its own local animation.

·    Stencil, Silhouette, and Preserve Transparency
Define individual layers to cut out all the layers below. Or have layers above honor the transparency of layers underneath.

·    Adjustment lights
Set a 3D light to illuminate a subset of layers in a composition.

·    Projection layers and colored shadows
Project light through a layer to create colored shadows, stained-glass effects, and the look of projected slides.

·    Nested compositions
Use a complex composition as a single-layer source. Multiple compositions can feed into one, or a single source comp can be used multiple times, allowing upstream changes to ripple throughout a project. Easily navigate through nested comps.

·    Unified Camera tool
Take advantage of three-button mice for more intuitive, immediate 3D control with the Unified Camera tool. Keyboard shortcuts make it easy to look at all or selected layers.

·    Adjustment layers
Create adjustment layers, similar to those in Adobe Photoshop software, to apply effects to any layers that appear below them.

·    Collapse Transformations
Combine the transform properties of nested compositions with higher-level comps to reduce the number of times the pixels of a layer are processed, preserving their fidelity.

·    Timeline editing tools
Easily add and extract content from the Timeline in your compositions using basic editing tools, such as Overlay and Ripple Insert Edit; Lift, Extract, and Trim Comp to Work Area.

Create and animate text and vector graphics-Work with text flexibly and creatively --edit it, add depth to it, animate it, convert it into editable paths to animate the vertices, or export animated text as vector-based SWF files. Use Shape Layers to animate vector graphics easily.

·    Intuitive text creation and animation

Type, edit, and fully customize characters, words, and paragraphs. Animate text along a path, randomize or wiggle text, and more in 2D or 3D space. Add depth to your text by making characters or an entire phrase move, rotate, blur, and cast shadows.

·    Shape Layers
Create and animate vector graphics easily with Shape Layers. Add properties such as stroke, stroke type, fill, and gradients to shapes and animate those properties. Also apply vector effects directly.

·    Web-ready text animations
Export animated text as vector-based SWF files to create innovative, web-friendly animations.

·    Text conversion to shapes or masks
Convert text into editable paths --either as Shape Layers or masks on solids --so you can animate the individual vertices of each character.

·    Continuous rasterization

Maintain sharpness at any scale by setting Adobe Illustrator artwork, text, shapes, solid layers, and vector components of PDF and SWF files to be continuously rasterized.

·    Solid layers
Create simple solid shapes that can have effects applied and that can be masked and animated.

·    Shape path operators
Modify and animate hand-drawn or parametric shapes by applying a series of specialized shape effects, including Merge Paths, Offset Paths, Pucker & Bloat, Repeater, Round Corners, Trim Paths, Twist, Wiggle Paths, Wiggle Transform, and Zig Zag.

·    Creative text animation tools
Typeset text professionally and then set it in motion. Use more than 250 professional 2D and 3D text animation presets, or create custom text animations from scratch.

Choose among extensive visual effects-Explore the possibilities with the wide range of visual effects available in After Effects. Use effects to correct color, blur or sharpen images, distort footage, turn flat objects into 3D shapes, and perform many other creative feats.

·    Color-correction effects

Manipulate color data with a wide variety of effects, including Color Finesse LE 3 to create LUTs, color-correction and tinting tools standardized in Photoshop, access to broadcast colors and gamma/pedestal/gain, and tools to isolate/change hues.

·    Camera Lens Blur
Create soft-focus effects with Camera Lens Blur. Set iris shape, blade curvature, and diffraction fringe characteristics for beautiful bokeh, and use these same settings for fantastic depth-of-field control with the After Effects 3D camera.

·    Digieffects FreeForm
Turn flat objects into virtually any 3D shape using this popular 3D mesh warp plug-in.

·    Stereoscopic 3D workflow improvements

Animate and composite stereoscopic projects more easily. Quickly set up stereo camera rigs. Save time with simplified rendering of multiple cameras, and work with an updated 3D Glasses effect.

·    Blur and Sharpen effects, including new Camera Lens Blur
Create blur effects customized to the needs of the shot, including compound and edge-preserving "smart" blurs, as well as standard sharpening effects and the new Camera Lens Blur.

·    Distortion effects
Warp and distort footage in specific, realistic ways with effects like Liquify, Bezier Warp, Wave Warp, Corner Pin, Reshape, and Displacement Map and with the unique Puppet tool and Digieffects FreeForm. Precisely simulate real camera lens distortion.

·    Generation effects
Generate imagery from simple fills and gradients to realistic lightning bolts and electricity, as well as lens flares, strokes, grids, circles, scribbled lines, and animated graphics based on audio.

·    Cycore effects
Add fast particle simulations, light sweeps and bursts, elaborate distortions, and stylized time-based effects and solve visual problems with basic utilities using this extensive package of more than 60 bundled effects from Cycore.

·    Stylized effects
Enhance existing imagery, ranging from subtle textures and hot-looking glows to stylized edges, brush strokes, and other effects. A dedicated Cartoon effect gives live footage the look of cel animation quickly and easily.

·    Simulation effects
Use advanced plug-ins to generate realistic wave reflection and caustic effects as well as to break up 2D layers into 3D pieces, which can then be exploded or further manipulated.

·    3D channel effects
Perform 3D post-processing of RLA and RPF files, extracting Object and ID Matte channels and normals and adding Depth Matte, Depth of Field, and Fog 3D effects.

·    Channel effects
Manipulate the individual color and alpha channel information of your images, including borrowing channels from other layers and performing advanced operations to combine channels or create grayscale images.

·    Perspective effects
Add shadows, bevel the outline of a layer, and even create a single 3D image by combining a left and right 3D view.

·    Noise and grain management effects
Match camera grain perfectly, automatically, and with full manual control, or remove it from footage entirely. Add or eliminate dust and scratches.

·    Time effects
Process footage based on other layers or adjacent frames using Time Difference, Displacement, and Echo effects. Timewarp offers extra control over the built-in Pixel Motion for precise retiming of footage.

·    Text effects
Generate numbers and timecode with text effects that supplement the powerful text engine already built into After Effects.

·    Utility effects
Customize Cineon log color conversion, alter assigned color profiles, manage high dynamic range (HDR) images to prevent clipping, and artificially grow images beyond their normal boundaries.

·    Transition effects
Use classic video-style transitions without the need to re-create them step by step.

·    Placeholders for missing effects
Preserve information about the settings used by each missing effect.

·    Effects & Presets panel
Sort, search for, and apply effects and animation presets quickly and easily. Save and share your own presets with the effects, settings, and animated properties you choose.

·    Support for Adobe Pixel Bender
Use Adobe Pixel Bender to create unique filters, blends, and fills --portable to multiple applications --to produce compelling, on-demand visual effects for the Adobe Flash Player runtime environment.

·    Turbulent Noise
Create natural phenomena such as clouds, lava, glowing water, and gas using the fast and efficient Turbulent Noise effect. Create looping animations of similar elements using the Fractal Noise effect.

Fluidly key, mask, rotoscope, and paint composites-Work efficiently with an unlimited number of masks, imported or created in After Effects. Animate masks and their parameters over time. Take advantage of Academy Award-winning Keylight from The Foundry, Roto Brush, and other compositing tools.

·    Roto Brush
Isolate foreground elements from backgrounds in a fraction of the time it would otherwise take using this revolutionary tool.

·    Unlimited masks
Control which parts of a 2D or 3D layer are visible by adding and animating an unlimited number of masks on any layer. Individually control their feather and transparency.

·    Keylight
Use Academy Award-winning Keylight from The Foundry to create subtle, elegant mattes of reflections; semitransparent areas; and hair. Spill suppression, color correction, and edge refinement tools help perfect the result.

·    Mask animations
Animate the shape of masks over time as well as their parameters, such as feather and opacity.

·    Imported masks
Copy paths in Photoshop and Illustrator and paste them as masks in After Effects. Import masks tracked in mocha for After Effects CS5.5 with the Shape effect.

·    RotoBezier masks
Create RotoBezier masks from scratch or convert them from Bezier masks.

·    Track mattes
Use any layer's pixel data (alpha channel or luminance) to determine the visibility of an adjacent layer.

·    Combined masks
Combine masks using Add, Subtract, Intersect, and Difference modes.