Feature Request: Camera Raw has a plugin/effect for After Effects

Thanks for filing this feature request.

> You can only use camera raw at the moment of the import,

This actually isn't the case! You can return to the Camera Raw settings for imported footage at any time by doing the following:

1. Right-click on the footage item in the Project panel and choose. Interpret Footage > Main.
2. Click on the More Options button at the bottom of the Main Options tab.

Bonus "did you know?" about using Camera Raw in After Effects: while After Effects only uses the Camera Raw importer by default for still camera raw files (Canon, Nikon, DNG, etc.), you can force After Effects to use the Camera Raw importer for any format that Adobe Camera Raw supports, like JPEG or PNG or TIFF. This includes both still images and image sequences!

To do this, in AE's Import File dialog, change the Enable field to All Files (instead of All Acceptable Files), then change the Format to Camera Raw. Then select the file you want to import.

Note that this only works if the Camera Raw importer supports that format. If you select a format that it doesn't support you'll get an error message. Also, you have to do this at the time of import. If you want to change an existing footage item in your project to use the Camera Raw importer, right-click on it and choose Replace Footage > File, select the same file and follow the steps above.

(I'll note here that we don't extensively test the Camera Raw importer in AE like this, with all the different file types that it can import, since AE normally handles most of them natively. If you run into a problem with a particular file or format, please file a bug.)

Lastly, I'd like to note that AE does have a handful of effects that are derived from single controls in the Camera Raw interface, like Exposure. These were implemented long ago when Camera Raw was simpler than it is now, so there's definitely much more we could do here. Your feature request would still be a great thing to see in AE!