Feature Requests

I work in blender. I've basically abandoned AE for anything but color and some moderate masking in post. Tracking can't be taken out of AE, or imported, and that leaves AE's once-great-now-subpar tracking toolset orphaned by an overly strict environment. As a 1st step in VFX that needs to be there till the end, it just can't fit in a workflow that is not 100% AE.

It's 2025 and Ae still doesn't have basic spell check functionality - Adobe please make this a top priority. It's embarrassing that we still don't have such a basic and important feature in the program.I can confidently speak on behalf of countless professional artists and editors that this is needed and many awkward mistakes could have been easilty fixed without this. No one ever wants to have to explain to a client that "sorry that mistake went unnoticed in the edit, my professional motion design tool doesn't have spell check"(it's quite ironic that when writing this forum post I discovered that even this Adobe community page doesn't have spell check when writing a forum post...)

I’m not very impressed with the new format. Precise dates are missing from older posts, many of my replies, and conversations are not visible. I don’t care for the partial image preview when you share images or screenshots.The create a post system requires way too many steps to create a thread, and the Category section requires a bunch of scrolling when creating a new post, and the options are not in alphabetical order. More clicks, more scrolling, and it’s not as easy to find threads you were working on. Still needs more work. I know this post is not about After Effects, but I can't find a category for the forum… There used to be one.

It would be handy if After Effects could have a gradient fill option for text layers.I would imagine options for whether the gradient would map from the top to the bottom of each letter, from the maximum possible letter height to the minimum possible (so that it’s even across a whole line), or across the entire existing block of text - even with multi lines.The big difference between this and applying a gradient effect would be that the gradient would move with each letter as it animates with text animators. Right now, there is no good way to do this.

Basic sound edition like pan and volume in form of a bezier curves on a waveform view. We have it in Audition and it was in the Sony Acid Pro. Why launch Audition for one track when all I need is basic volume control change channel. or 

You wanna play with the big boys in VFX? Good. This would be a nice step up to the plate. AE has no support for deep images, and its 3D is atrocious. You would need to fix a lot of the issues just to get this working, let alone usable.

It's on the tin. Raw formats and image sequences need proper import and handling via options that are readily accessible, as well as LUTs, color management, and colorspace transforms. How am i supposed to import linear raw EXR from blender without converting to log or rec709 or AgX? Why aren't there standard LUT import and exports?

 AE's 3D tools are stuck in 1996 because they are a discreet effect and controlled as such. Proper 3D VFX workflows require a good deal of flexibility, an entire monitor full of options, shaders, baking, export forms, VFX standards adherence, 3D data I/O, etc. Worst of all, AE isn't even true 3D. It's 2.5D, and the decrepit codebase can't really be changed without essentially building a new software.Heck, Adobe owns substance 3D now, but to my knowledge has no software that really integrates with it, and instead has left it a messy toolbox of loosely related software with similar UI, and each has one main feature that most 3D software just put together to speed things up. instead of trying to jam 3D into compositing software, make 3D VFX a new software, and make importing the renders, or rendering linked data, very robust. We're talking better handling for image seuences, color space transforms, LUT's, EXR handling, deep image format, 3D track export, the works. Maybe something that ca

It's pretty cumbersome to have expressions work with dropdowns because currently you can only get the number value of a dropdown. Here's an example:if (thisEffect("dropdown").value == 1) value = 13;else if (thisEffect("dropdown").value == 2) value = 50;else if (thisEffect("dropdown").value == 3) value = 100;Now let's say you use the dropdown to control 12 properties. Then you make some mistake or you decide to change the values of this dropdown. Have fun.SOLUTIONA solution would be to have a .textValue property of dropdowns. Here's how that would work with the example:if (thisEffect("dropdown").textValue == "Style 1") value = 13;else if (thisEffect("dropdown").textValue == "Style 2") value = 50else if (thisEffect("dropdown").textValue == "Style 3") value = 100Now the code is a LOT more readable and easier to work with.

Currently with scripting, Dropdown Menu controls are write-only, by using setPropertyParameters() with a text array to change the list of options. It would be helpful to have something like getPropertyParameters() to output the existing control options as a text array, so that the controls are read/write.

Add the ability to crop a composition to its layer bounds. Useful for when you pre-comp and don't want to inherit the original comp bounds, but use the layer bounds instead.Alternatively, add a pre-comp dialogue option to crop to layer bounds when creating a pre-comp.Similar to what this script does:https://aescripts.com/auto-crop/

As a reasonably new user of After Effects, the only thing I find frustrating is the 'inexact' nature of zooming on the timeline.With other Adobe products (and within the comp window itself) you can zoom in in percentage increments.I find, when working on a project, the tiny zoom at the bottom of the timeline is so small and inexact, I only really use it like a 3 stage zoom, all the way in, medium and all the way out. Anything else is quite finicky.The time navigator (above the timeline is far more useful in that you can drag in or out the view with greater control because it's larger.WHAT ITS MISSING FOR ME IS A box to type or select a percentage. (15%, or 25%, or 50%)This would allow me to use a common percentage for my comps that suits my specific comp.Depending on the length of my comp I quite often use the SAME PERCENTAGE because of the scale of my effects, or clips or the timing of my animation. If I could easily zoom in 25% it would make my life much easier.You could incorpo

I'd find it helpful to have a "Stop after current" button that would continue to render the video that is in progress, and then stop, so that all remaining items are still set to 'Queued'. (Or even for this to be the default behaviour.)   Currently, if I've set a lot of videos to render, and need to stop for some reason, I need to stop the queue, and then later find the item that was 'Stopped by user' and re-queue that item. This adds workload and also increases the risk of an item being forgotten during the export process.

After effects is in DIRE need of an edge extend tool. When dealing with keys or roto that has haloing and edge contamination issues and/or transparency from motion blur. To the best of my knoledge, there is no way in AE to extend the color and luminance values from the core of the key and extend them outward. This is a vital tool for correcting edges. I have been looking for over a decade for a tool or technique that can reliably to this in AE, and there isn't one. I literally have to have a Nuke artist do this for me. Nuke has a myriad of tools for the the clean up of contaminated edges on roto or keys.This is an example of what edge extend does in Nuke. this isn't an averaging of the overall pixels, it just extends the values outward so things like motion blur can be rebuilt.Here's a video describing the process of using Color Smear with an actor very quickly crossing a bright monitor that needs screen replacement. this is something I do regularly, and it's a tota

I don't see a lot of discussion around this topic and most After Effects compositors either use sub par methods or simply aren't in need for high end solutions. But for us being stuck in the ecosystem it is tremendously hard to perform high quality composite work without any form of pixel spread to do clean ups, edge extends and creation of clean plates from green screens. These tools have been available in compositing packages like Flame, Fusion and Nuke for years already. The only thing we have is an immensly slow performing extend in Refine Hard Matte with tons of options we don't need and a range limit of about 1pixel. Their tools perform close to realtime and are able to smear the pixel information much much further. Please consider implementing a very fast performing high quality pixel spreader that is able to take RGB information and spread it with different methods/modes via it's own layer's alpha/mask or external via the mask layer selection. To understand what

There doesn't seem to be any way to make audio editable in a mogrt, would be great to be able to do things like link audio levels to a checkbox to make it possible to enable/disable through the Essential Properties etc.   Currently manipulating audio with Essential Properties appears to be impossible

Right now, when multiple compositions are queued but not yet rendered, each one requires its own manual “Output To” selection. This gets tedious fast when you have dozens of comps waiting. It would be a major time-saver to select multiple queued items and assign a single output destination to all of them at once. Currently, even if you select all the comps and set the output for one, it doesn’t propagate to the other selected comps. This would simplify batch-rendering workflows and eliminate a lot of repetitive clicking, especially on large projects with many deliverables.

It would be great if they activated the option again to change the color of the lines in the after effects - I would like to be able to customize it as I liked as before - combining the colors with my setup - it is a very simple option but personally it was very good ! I wish it were possible to do it again in this version "2026" > option.. 

The text editing panel in the After Effects Properties Panel (when text has been set up as an essential property) is a fixed height of about 2.5 lines tall. Premiere's Properties panel shows three full lines. (This appears to be the visible amount of text regardless of display settings, though I won't pretend I did exhaustive research here.)   These work ok in many cases, but for templates where longer text will be the norm, it makes it fiddly and annoying for the end user to work with text in this small space, and means they generally can't see all of it at once without copy/pasting from another app.  I'd love the ability to establish a specific height for the text editing area for the end user - perhaps a setting could be added in the existing Edit Properties pop-up? An editable height value / number of visible lines would allow for excellent customization, and could allow for a reduction in screen real estate for templates that would never use more than a single line!

In a lot of Adobe programs, you can hold "option" (on mac) and drag a shape or layer to duplicate it. Except for AE, this is however a very fast and interactive way to duplicate something that could even be applied to effects, keyframes, etc. Here is a demo video of how this would work: https://vimeo.com/137401276

The text in error messages is kind of 'dead'. When we need it to report an issue, its a pain. Please make this text selectable and copyable.

Windows has a surprisingly low file path character limit. When Collecting files, it's nice that the (Footage) folder mimics the Project Panel folder structure, but It'd be nice to have the option to place all assets in a single root folder.I'm often deep in a directory when unzipping a collected project. The depth of the heirirchy within the project file makes sense, but when mapped to a folder structure blows past the file size limit causing headaches. I don't often need the folder structure to mimic the project file, so it feels like paths are artifically long causing headaches for a seemingly niche benefit.When working with others or in a location with many projects, moving a project file extract location isn't feasible and would impact other user on the system. Considering it's unlikely microsoft will change this limit anytime soon, I am suggesting these fixes. An option to place all files in a single folder (easy) or sort by file type/extension (moderate) or compress the file

Yup. A search box will be good for the Prefs - quicker to get to the right settings as well as perhaps finding related settings - imagine finding a setting you never knew existed but would greatly enhance your user-experience. 

When clearing the disk cache using app.executeCommand, After Effects should also display a confirmation warning.Specifically, when calling app.executeCommand(10200), the disk cache is cleared immediately without any warning, unlike when a user triggers the same action through the UI or a keyboard shortcut. This behavior can lead to accidental cache deletion and feels unfriendly to users.I would greatly appreciate it if a confirmation dialog could be added for this command as well.

It’s 2025. I open After Effects and… it feels like I’m still working in 2013.While Blender, Unreal Engine, Houdini, and even newer tools like Cavalry are evolving with bold updates, After Effects has barely moved. Every time a new version drops, it’s disappointing to see tiny improvements disguised as “major features.” It’s as if Adobe is keeping the program on life support without actually developing it.Let’s call it out: Graph Editor – still outdated, clunky, and untouched for over a decade. No real-time preview, no modular behavior, no intelligent UI. No modern easing tools – no built-in bounce, elastic, inertia, or overshoot. You still need to rely on Expression tricks or 3rd-party scripts for basic animation finesse. No native effectors or procedural animation tools – while tools like Cavalry, Cinema 4D, and Notch offer real-time procedural workflows and effectors, After Effects is stuck in manual keyframes and precomp hell. Still no native IK (inverse kinemati