Feature Focus: New After Effects Spectrum UI & Windows UI Performance Improvements

[Brian C Carter]

Today, we’re proud to announce a new look for After Effects in Beta!

As of Beta Version 24.4 build 20 — available today — After Effects is themed and styled using Adobe’s Spectrum design with a new modern look across the entire app.

After Effects Beta now ships with three different themes: Darkest, Dark and Light. There’s also a new toggle for switching between a high-contrast mode for easier visibility and accessibility or a low-contrast mode for focusing on your content.

Additionally, we’re also shipping GPU-accelerated UI performance improvements on Windows computers. This improvement may be most noticeable in timeline interaction, comp overlay drawing, and on multiple monitors. 

This is a beta release with additional fixes and changes rolling out in the coming weeks. Please let us know if you encounter any issues — particularly with specific GPUs — or have suggestions. Feedback from our beta community is appreciated and essential for building better and stronger versions of After Effects. We’re so excited for you to try the After Effects Beta and can’t wait to hear what you think!

Known issues:
Users with some older Intel Integrated GPUs may experience some instability with our updated overlay — work is in progress on this, and we will update when this is fixed. If you experience any instability, please let us know. 

We have done testing with ScriptUI but can't anticipate every third party script out there, please let us know if there are scripts that are not working. In some cases, the script developer may need to update their script. 

We have tracked down an issue with some third-party scripts that use png files on Windows that causes an "Unexpected Data Type" error. We are currently investigating. If you delete the ModifiedWorkspaces and OriginalUserWorkspaces folders in the preferences to reset the workspaces, you should be able to open After Effects (Beta) without encountering the error. If you then open third-party panels one at a time, you will be able to determine which one(s) are causing the error, which should allow you to continue using the Beta.
Update: this issue has been fixed in build 28.

We have also fixed an issue with single character buttons not rendering the character.

[Jessica McMillan]

@tsuku_si We have reached out to the developer of Sweet to see if we can get a repro scenario to help resolve this issue. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

[hellopaul4]

In both AE and PPro, I used to open the console, find the UI font size setting, and set it to something a bit larger to make everything easier to read on my 32" 4K monitor. That font size thing has now gone away from the console; will it ever return - or might we be getting something in the prefs to set UI font size maybe?

[The37784462b4hm]

please dont remove the Enable_Theme_Colorizing true from debug database view in console. i like the colorful ui

[hellopaul4]

@The37784462b4hm  I enabled "Enable_Theme_Colorizing" but nothing changed - I assume that should make the "change highlight colour" box appear in the Prefs > Appearance? I haven't seen that box for years, and it does not appear if I set Enable_Theme_Colorizing to "true". If I recall correctly, there used to be something somewhere in the prefs file which cold maybe be edited to change that highlight colour.

[hellopaul4]

The weird look of Ray Dynamic Color is no longer an issue, because if I try to create a new colour palette (by clicking the + icon) AE hangs completely, and a force-quit is required. The authors of the plug-in know about this, but seem to be hoping that Adobe will fix/change whatever causes the issue: https://aescripts.com/ray-dynamic-color/ (look in the Comments tab)

So Ray Dynamic Color is completely dead...at least for now.

[JohnColombo]

Hi @hellopaul4,

We've been in touch with the authors of Ray Dynamic Color and are investigating the bug causing the script to hang.

Cheers,

- John, After Effects Engineering Team 

[QuietRobot]

Are there plans for the right click menu to respect the OS theme color? thanks.

[scrozier]

Still struggle with many 3d layers or many layers in general on Windows. Are you guys still working on UI performance becasue its still not realtime when working with 100+ layers. It still becomes a slideshow and incredibly difficult to work with. 

[QuietRobot]

Is it possible to add more margin to this line of buttons so that when they are activated they do not overwhelm with the blue line of focus? Thanks!

[simon0815]

hi!

I use a graphic tablet, therefore: no scroll wheel on a mouse! This scrollbar is pretty tight/narrow to grab with the cursor. Would be nice if it could be a couple pixel wider.

[QuietRobot]

For me it's fine, I even think it should be narrower.

What you ask is perhaps to widen the action area that is different from what is visually represented.

[simon0815]

ok. Lets make the action area wider 🙂

[Shebbe]

If you have middle click bound to a side button on your pen you can pan/scroll these panels with that instead of clicking on the scrollbars. Middle click scrolling can be initiated from anywhere on the panel so you don't need to be that precise. The only downside is it isn't as fast as normal scrolling so not the most practical for longer distances.

[simon0815]

oh, thanks! Just bound the click to the pen!