Feature Requests

After effects is great...  But some times I need a tool that is light weight IE starts up lighting fast and is easy to jump right into...  to convert or compress a movie file to differnt formates...  Or create a fast simple animation that is a simple tween.  or text fade in....  Aftereffect is great for high power video work...  But I miss flash for faster animation work...  Or It would be help to have a super light weight converstion and compression tool where you can convert and compress files... 

I'm being asked to create captions both for animations/videos created in After Effects with little or no crossover with Premiere Pro or more elaborate captions than Premiere can handle on its own. I know some plug-ins exust but they're a very mixed bag with most really for Premiere Pro but with the ability to use MOGRTs created in AE. I'd love to simple be able to generate captions right in After Effects in a similar fashion as Premiere Pro so I can work with them directly in AE.

I’d like to suggest a feature for future versions of After Effects that would greatly improve workflow efficiency when working with complex compositions. Currently, the layer order in the timeline is directly tied to their visual stacking order, which limits flexibility when organizing projects with many layers. My suggestion is to implement a feature that allows users to rearrange the layers in the timeline without affecting their render or visual stacking order (for example, allowing layer 3 to appear below layer 1 in the timeline view, even if it's rendered on top). This would enable users to organize layers logically—by type, function, group, etc.—without altering the final output of the composition. This is especially helpful for projects with dozens or hundreds of layers.One possible solution could be the implementation of an alternate view mode or an option to “decouple visual stacking from timeline order,” similar to how groups or tags work in other software.

I use AE every day for more than 15y and I realised there is one thing I really hate (ok, maybe one of two. second is endless  window menu when you have lot of comps opened and need to run script at the end of the list. Even "better" when you have more than twenty scripts installed).Everyday I literary cry and asking "why?!"My workplace looks like the first image. And every time I onen new viewer or just drag any panel to make it bigger temporarilly and return it back (comp panel up to show more layer, or viewer to see more, etc) it totally mess up my arangement and I need to fix panel sizes over and over, hundred times every day..I am used to use workplace presets, but it is not comfortable to wait until the whole panels setup load and draw. There should be icon on every panel to prioritize maintain its size, or just size all panels relatively to the one you resize, or maybe anything else, but actual state is something made me mad. Every time I change temporary my panel

Currently, MOGRTs made in After Effects miss the option to change font when they are used in Premiere. Additionally they are also missing the more detailed options of character properties:While we're at it, lets also have paragraph properties added: This feature has been requested since 2017. This is desperately needed. Please update this as soon as possible. 

Parenting, matte, window, scripts menu are horrible to use when the list gets bigger than the screen.  To scroll through these menus you have to click on little arrows up and down. They should be upgraded to something like the font menu where you can scroll it when it's open.  Version 25.2.2 (build 2)

I nearly always zoom in and out using ctrl- / ctrl+, but often want to see my comp in the 'fit to view' magnification. It'd be nice if this was one of the 'stops' when zooming like this. I know it breaks the convention that each level of zoom is half/double the previous one, and it possibly might very slightly confuse someone in the rare situation if their window layout happened to mean that the 'fit' view is, say 52.3% (then zooming in from 50% would have a negligible effect), but I do think it'd be useful.Good idea, don't you think? Upvote! Upvote now!

Let us solo a Layer, even if it is invisible - maybe with a kind of 'peep' mode in which the layer is shown while the solo button is pressed, and is made invisible again when the button is released.Sometimes we need to see what a hidden layer (e.g. a matte) is looking like. Inthe current version, we need to turn on visibility first before it can be soloed. That is rather tideous.

So I use and animate with rounded rectangle a lot. I animate the size of it, and it always want's to animate the size from the centre. of the shape, where as I'd like to animate the size from a corner. I've been doing a round about way for years with an expression. https://youtu.be/_CucPSu7plM?si=e0ZS1OQyLvQiBmivbut I think there should be a drop down menu where you can choose a corner of keep it in the middle or have it be a free transform.

I need to apply grain frequently in my work to clean plates I’ve created, and it needs to match the 6k/4k HDR plates I’ve been provided. I prefer Add Grain to Match Grain, as it’s quicker and more accurate for me to manually set it. Because of the size of the plates, and the lack of GPU acceleration in this plug-in, it’s the main bottleneck in my rendering speed, plus 32-bit would help with color fidelity. Obviously, multiframe rendering would be great, too, but I would at least love GPU acceleration to start!

A simple feature that would make life easier in AE - when clicking the transparency grid option, allow me to toggle between black, white, and grid. I'm sometimes working with a white or black element and need a different bg for more contrast.  Thanks!

It is as simple as it sounds: why just don't add solid settings which now are within a separate window ("Layer - Solid settings" or Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+Y) into corresponding layer's dropdown? It would be a lot simpler to access solid's color and size properties as well as keyframe them and add an ability to make gradient fill like it is in Photoshop. And of course, this feature will have a positive impact on the workflow of any user from a beginner to a professional.

It's great we can send HDR video to an HDR monitor, but we need a way to assign a color profile to a specific monitor

Burying the footage interpretation settings in a modal dialog makes adjusting interpretation settings too difficult when dealing with lots of footage items, particularly when each piece of footage needs its own pulldown removal settings. A non-modal panel would be a lot more efficient, since it would allow the user to frame through and play back footage in order to test settings without having to exit and re-enter the modal dialog after each change of the settings. The ability to apply individual interpretation settings to multiple selected footage items at once would be a great bonus. Some of this can be done via scripting, but to make such a script responsive to changes in the project selection requires scheduled task trickery that introduces its own problems.

Maybe this is an easy addition? Was hoping I could use something like [compComment] as part of a custom render file name template. I'd like to retain my internal comp naming system to navigate the project however I have to rename the exports with keynumbers. My current workaround is to copy the comp name to the Comment field for reference and rename the comp to the required keynumber for export.

It would be a life saver to have a footage orientation dropdown in the interpret footage menu. Because it saves time from having to precompose all my 90 degree recorded footage. Also from rotating my layers and screwing up referenced effects and such. Davinci Resolve has it as a clip attribute.0 90and -90 degree option.

The transform box is all well and good but it doesn't really give you the ability to do repeatable graph edits. Its all guesswork. Even the info pane doesn't tell you a scale percentage.  For example this is a simple LTR animation (x pos keyframe) that I want to flip and have it go RtL. Ideally I want to scale this keframe over the x-axis -100%. I can click the bottom of the transform box and drag it over and up but I'm just eyeballing the graph until it looks similar, instead of doing an exact transform.  Ideally you should be able to double click on the transform box and type in a value or something like that. In blender you would select keyframes, type S then a value. That is very fast, but not really how AE does things, but would love some more dynamic manipulation of keyframes like Blender has.   

A while back, I suggested for an Incremental Iterative Preview feature where a user may set a lower-than-comp-fps as the initial preview fps and AE would then increase the AE for each subsequent iterative preview, in the same preiew session, until full fps is met. This was to allow the user to get a good idea of the movement/layout/issues as early as quickly as possible.Here's another useful feature, IMO, Intelligent Precursive Preview - Current constructs are such that the user has to wait for AE to cache/create the entire playback range before providing a full framerate preview. So, a Intelligent Precursive Preview feature will look ahead (and back) to ascertain when it can start playback such that when playback is initiated, the user receives full framerate preview and continuous playback even at the uncached/un-rendered when Preview was initiated. So, the Preview Engine correctly estimates, or precursively estimates the time time it will take to prep the entire Previ

Dear Adobe Team,I would like to bring to your attention an issue that affects the proper display and use of Persian text in After Effects. Currently, when working with Persian text, After Effects uses Hindi digits (०, १, २, ३, etc.) instead of the proper Persian numerals (۰, ۱, ۲, ۳, etc.). This causes a typographic issue as Persian numerals are distinct from Hindi digits, both in appearance and usage.The Issue:After Effects does not recognize Persian numerals, and instead, uses Hindi digits by default.This misinterpretation of digits can lead to incorrect typesetting and visual inconsistencies for Persian-language users.While Hindi and Persian numerals may appear similar, they are different and used in different linguistic and cultural contexts.Proposed Solution:I propose that Adobe introduces proper support for Persian numerals in After Effects, ensuring that the application recognizes and correctly displays Persian digits (۰, ۱, ۲, ۳, etc.) when working with Persian text. This would

Hi, Despite the welcome addition of user choice to install Cinema4D alongside AE or not I keep getting frustrated by the fact that this gets asked every time you click the Update button. I'm running AE Beta next to the main release which gets frequent updates. Every time I need to turn that off to prevent a cinema install which I'm already managing myself with a normal Cinema license. It would be great to give us the option to always ignore this install request completely.

When rendering a project with particularly large files, the gpu can run out of memory, aborting the render and throwing the error attached below.I'd like to suggest a third option other than GPU Acceleration (CUDA) or Software Only exclisively where, should the render fail, GPU rendering falls back to software only upon error.  Acknowleging that the render quality may be slightly different, sometimes completing this render and queue as a whole is more important than ensuring parity.Error mentioned above:"After Effects has encountered a failure related to GPU-enabled effects on this frame. This is likely because your GPU is out of memory. Please decrease your rendering resolution, close applications that may be using GPU resources, or set this project to render effects using "Mercury Software Only" in File -> Project Settings -> Video Rendering and Effects. VR effects do not render using software only, and can require large amounts of GPU VRAM."

Why has Adobe after all these years not implemeted a text to path feature in After Effects. I have to jump through hoops everytime trying to remeber how this is done. The point is, its useed often and not brought in at any stage of updates. Ive been using AE for about 15 years, and we were doing text along a path then, why did AE go through iterations of CS1 - CS6, then on to creative cloud and never add in the feature. Its lazy. Its simple code that should be in the usr interface as a button. one clecik. I do not understand how people can be in fulltime employent and be so incompetent. Everybody in the creative community would say yes we need and use this feature. So why is it not there?

Hi there,in the Keyframe Velocity window there is the "Continuous (Lock Outgoing to Incomimg)" checkbox, which when clicked, copies the incoming speed of a keyframe to the outgoing speed, and locks them together.Every time i need to ease into a continuous motion, I find myself manually copying the outgoing speed to the ingoing before locking them. This can happen multiple times per work session.It would save me a lot of time to have a choice of locking direction - Incoming to Outgoing or vice versa.Thanks for reading!

I know it's super silly nitpicking, but has anyone noticed what reads on the dialogue when importing Jpegs? It says PNG Sequence, Illustrator/PDF/EPS Sequence & so on for the others, but for some reason reads "ImporterJpeg Sequence" when comes to Jpegs only. I always thought it was a bug, perhaps related to the French interface, but never changed for ages. Does anyone know the reason/story behind it? Cheers