Second-to-none visual effects
Ah, the things you can do with Adobe After Effects! Its impressive set of tools and functionalities has made it the preferred choice of filmmakers, video designers and animators—professionals and amateurs. Created by Adobe, this monster of an editing application was built for creating video animations, visual effects, motion graphics and compositions. Just turn on the TV for a few minutes—a good part of whatever you’re watching is probably made with After Effects.
While its workflow is pretty similar to a lot of the existing video editing software, and it can be indeed used for video editing, what really sets After Effects apart is its focus on visual effects. So don’t think that it’s a similar product to Premiere Pro—it's not! Premiere Pro is perfect for editing, and its timeline allows you to work seamlessly with both video and audio. After Effects is made for creative compositions, special effects and motion graphics. The two can work together as well: you can edit your video by cutting and adding clips together on Premiere Pro, and then use After Effects to add special effects to specific parts of your clip. There’s room for all the creativity you can master!
With After Effects project files, or templates, your work with motion graphics and visual effects will get a lot easier. In short, they are customizable After Effect files, neatly organized and labelled. You can easily change colors, text and other design elements without having to spend time on creating timelines and effects. It’s all there—you just need to customize it to fit your project.
VideoHive is the world’s leading marketplace for After Effects templates, so as you can imagine—there’s a lot of top-quality assets to choose from. The best thing is to have an idea of what you want to do, and look at the different types of files we have available. Here are a few:
- Openers are perfect if you want to create a great introduction to your video,
- Broadcast packages allow you to focus on the content of your show, without having to design the visual effects as well,
- Elements like lower-thirds, backgrounds, transitions and overlays are crucial to add text and other 2-D effects to your clip,
- Product promos are a great way to showcase your products,
- Video displays offer beautiful, creative ways to present ideas, products, stories and much more,
- Titles include trailer videos and all you need to add text to your clip.
You’ll find that the After Effects templates created by VideoHive authors are well structured, easy to understand, and come with detailed documentation on how to use them. This is what makes these files such valuable assets to creatives and project makers: they make you save a lot of time.
And if it's your first time with After Effects... we hear you. Being as rich in functionalities and as complex as it is, approaching the software as a beginner can be a bit intimidating. But fear not! Tuts+ instructor and seasoned video professional Dave Scotland has put together a great video course to help you get started with After Effects. Check it out and have fun!