Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Hello and welcome to the Afer Efects CS3 Professional preview. Please note that this preview is an
unfnished product and does not include all the functionality that will appear in the fnal release.
While some may fnd the quality appropriate for use in a production environment, the preview is
not fnal-release quality and should not be used for critical work. Adobe does not ofer technical
support for the Afer Efects CS3 Professional Preview.
For a list of system requirements, please see http://www.adobe.com/products/aferefects/systemreqs/.
After Efects CS3 Professional Preview Limitations
Tis preview version does not include the ability to encode the following video and audio for-
mats: MPEG-2, HDV, H.264, Dolby, MP3, MP3 Pro, and AAC/AAC+. In addition, you will not
be able to import most non-QuickTime MPEG compressed fles.
Bundled third-party efects (Synthetic Aperture Keylight, Cycore Efects, and Te Foundry Color
Finesse) are not included in the preview.
Te project fle format of the preview is not compatible with previous versions of Afer Efects.
Projects created in or saved from the Afer Efects CS3 preview will open in the fnal release ver-
sion of Afer Efects CS3 Professional.
Note: Te Afer Efects CS3 Professional preview is available for use for a limited time and will expire
on August 31st 2007.
After Efects CS3 Professional Preview Known Issues
We recommend uninstalling Adobe Photoshop CS3 Beta and Soundbooth Beta 1 and Beta 2
prior to installing Afer Efects CS3 Professional Preview.
Uninstalling Afer Efects CS3 Professional Preview will disable the Adobe Photoshop CS3 Beta,
uninstall Adobe Bridge, and disable Adobe Device Central. Running the Adobe Photoshop CS3
beta installer in repair mode will fx these problems.
Whats new in After Efects CS3 Professional
Shape layers
Use new shape drawing tools to create and animate vector graphics. Strokes and fllsincluding
editable gradientscan be added to shapes, and these properties can be animated. Afer Efects
also includes shape layer operations based on Adobe Illustrator vector efects.
Puppet tools
Puppet tools let you quickly add natural motion to raster images and vector graphics, including
still images, shapes, and text characters. Use Puppet tools to easily distort any image with natural,
life-like motion.
Adobe
After Efects
CS3 Professional
Contents
Some notes before you start . . . . 1
Whats new in After Efects CS3
Professional . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1. Managing projects . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Importing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Compositions . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4. Views and previews. . . . . . . . . 5
5. Layers and properties . . . . . . . 5
6. Animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
7. Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
8. Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
9. Drawing and painting . . . . . . . 9
10. Efects and animation presets 11
11. Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
12. Rendering and exporting . . . 12
After Efects CS3 Professional 2
Photoshop layer styles, video layers, and Vanishing Point exchange
Layer styles and video layers are preserved when you import a Photoshop fle. You can also add and animate layer
styles within Afer Efects and use advanced blending options. Export Vanishing Point data from Adobe Photoshop
CS3 Extended, and then import the data into Afer Efects to automatically build a 3D composition from the 2D
Photoshop image
Flash CS3 Professional integration
Afer Efects timeline markers can be embedded as FLV cue points in order to create interactive video presentations
in Flash Professional. In addition, Afer Efects CS3 can batch render .FLV for use in Flash. Import SWF fles with the
alpha channel preserved and continuously rasterize SWF layers to scale them without loss in quality.
Per-character 3D properties for text animation
Explore new text animation possibilities by making individual characters or words in your text move and rotate in 3D
space.
Brainstorm
Jump-start animations with Brainstorm, a new user interface that ofers variations based on selected design and ani-
mation parameters. Choose which properties and efects you want to explore, and Brainstorm will propose animated
variations
Enhanced color management
Use color management to maintain precise and predictable color from input to output. Simulate the output of various
flm stocks and devices to control color quality
Clip Notes
Streamline the review and approval process. Render your work into an Adobe PDF fle that enables anyone with
Adobe Reader sofware to make timecode-accurate comments. When you import the comments into Afer Efects,
they appear as markers on the Timeline.
Performance improvements
Take full advantage of multiprocessor and multicore systems to render multiple frames simultaneously during RAM
previews and fnal renders.
Export and preview video for mobile devices
New export presets in the Export Settings dialog box make it easier to export movies suitable for playback on mobile
devices, such as mobile phones and the Apple iPod. Use Adobe Device Central CS3 to help ensure your video will
look great on an array of supported mobile devices
For more details on these new features and more, review the following sections.
After Efects CS3 Professional 3
1. Managing projects
Multiprocessing
Afer Efects now supports multiprocessing, so if you have additional CPUs and enough memory, when you do a
RAM preview or export through the Render Queue, Afer Efects will attempt to render multiple frames at the same
time.
To enable multiprocessing, choose Edit > Preferences > Multiprocessing (Windows) or Afer Efects > Preferences >
Multiprocessing (Mac OS), and then select Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously. Te bottom of the Preferences
dialog box shows how many additional processors (in addition to the worst-case scenario of one processor) will be
used at the current settings. To increase the number of background processes that can run, decrease Maximum RAM
Cache Size or install more RAM.
New Memory & Cache preferences
Tere are some new preferences in the Memory & Cache preferences dialog box for the Conformed Media Cache.
You can now do any of the following:
Specify a location for the media database. Te media database retains links to all cached media fles. Tis media
cache database is shared with Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Encore, and Adobe Soundbooth, so each of these appli-
cations can each read to and write from the same set of cached media fles. If you change the location of the data-
base from within any of these applications, the location is updated for the other applications, too. Each application
can use its own cache folder, but the same database keeps track of them all.
Remove conformed fles for footage no longer on your hard disk by clicking the Clean button.
Specify a location for the Media Cache where Afer Efects conformed fles are stored.
New Memory & Cache preferences
2. Importing
Photoshop fles
When you use the Vanishing Point feature in Photoshop CS3 Extended, you can then use the File > Export For Afer
Efects CS3 (.vpe) command to save the results as a collection of PNG flesone for each planeand a .vpe fle that
describes the geometry of the scene. You can then import the .vpe fle into Afer Efects using File > Import. Afer
Efects uses the information in the .vpe fle to recreate the scene as a composition containing a camera layer and one
perspective corrected 3D layer for each PNG fle.