Adobe’s compositing software, After Effects, exists in two versions. After Effects Standard is a compositing application with basic compositing features, while the Professional version offers 16-bit support and motion tracking. On the PC, After Effects holds its own, but how about the Mac? More specifically, does After Effects make any sense when you have Motion and Shake on Mac OS X? The answer depends on your way of working.

t there be no doubt about it: After Effects is a strong application in terms of compisiting and motion graphics. The Standard version enables you to achieve much of the effects you can also achieve today with Motion. The Professional version can do some of the things Shake can do as well. But there are majour differences between Apple’s Pro applications in this application realm and Adobe’s venerable sixth version.

For starters, After Effects has a timeline-based interface. This means everything you do will be linked to the timeline. In fact, the timeline is your principal control centre from where you set up actions and effects. Each effect in term is linked to the existence of keyframes; without keyframes nothing happens in After Effects. The keyframe approach worked well in yesterday’s applications, but after having seen Motion and Shake, it appears too much Flash-like. It can also quickly become tedious. For example, complex effects require many keyframes of which it is easy to lose sight.

Nevertheless, After Effects has its own group of evangelists and rightly so. It is not because the interface could offer an easier way of working that the results you can achieve with this program are not professional in every sense of the word. The Standard version, in my opinion, is even more than what you will need if all you want to do is creating beautiful titling in a short time span.

After Effects 6.5 indeed offers some interesting and nice-looking time savers such as 300 text effects. One example is a text effect that effectively makes your text look like the Matrix characters drooping off the screen. To achieve this effect, just select the text and apply one of the many, many presets for text. I must admit I missed this effect in Motion. I know it’s probably already passé to apply it, but it looks so darn good, and if you can have it by three or four clicks, why not?

In version 6.5 many features were added to make this sort of laziness more effective. Many additions to cloning and erasing, for example. or quick reformatting of text layers. Add to that a seamless integration with Adobe’s other applications, like Photoshop CS and Illustrator CS.

In terms of creativity, After Effects is not bad either. 3D effects are among the goodies that were lacking in Motion. 3D Invigorator is a freely included plug-in from Zakwerks.

The Standard version is full of these niceties. The Pro version lifts the entire application to a higher level. 16-bit support comes standard. Motion tracking is available as well. In version 6.5 motion tracking became a bit more powerful. Motion tracking can be applied to only horizontal or vertical coordinates of a motion target. There are new motion pointers that will keep you informed of what you are adjusting, and you can more easily view regions with zooming and magnification. When motion tracking falls below a specified level of confidence, you can have After Effects perform a special action you define.

It all works very well and once you get the hang of it, it is all fairly easy to do. On the Mac, however, After Effects remains a island at the output end. On a PC users get not only integration with Photoshop and Illustrator, but also with Premiere and Encore. On the Mac, there is no integration of any kind with Final Cut Pro or DVD Studio Pro.

My major concern with After Effects Pro was the question whether it can compete with Shake 3. The answer to that question is---perhaps obviously---no. Shake’s node-based interface may be much harder to learn and master, but once you master the Shake methodology, I don’t believe there can be anything more powerful, simply because the choices and implementations of effects is virtually endless. If one approach doesn’t work, you simply try another combination in perhaps another order. That is to little effect in After Effects. Only the stacking order of layers in the timeline and to some extent the application order of filters and effects will change the end result.

Shake’s cripting language is also more powerful than After Effects’. Shake’s is really a programming language and very complicated compositing will be done using custom-written programs. After Effects does have a scripting language, but you can do less with it. After Effects is probably best suited for short clips and less demanding movie projects.

After Effects does stack up very favourably against Motion. Although the latter’s interface is more of a gem by itself, and the non-keyframe based approach is better in terms of what you can do with it potentially, Motion is still a rough diamond---it’s also version 1, whereas After Effects is six versions ahead. Nevertheless, After Effects offers somewhat more control over motion graphics than Motion. The way to get the same results as with Motion is perhaps less agreeable, but After Effects at no moment limits your creativity.