Item: Adobe After Effects
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

In our higher education institution, Adobe After Effects is primarily used by creative units around campus, primarily by marketing professionals and instructional media producers. It allows for these roles to create high-fidelity, professional animations, and graphics for use in a variety of deliverable formats. The complexity and depth of After Effects require training and a high degree of comfort/familiarity with the program to ensure that the user is able to create what they want. As such, its usage across the institution is limited.

Pros and Cons

If you can dream it, you can probably create it in After Effects. With a host of features, 3rd-party plugins, and a high degree of customizability, After Effects is an agile platform for video/graphic compositing.
After Effects integrates well with other Adobe products such as Premiere Pro. If you make an edit in one, it reflects in the other without having to render out a full project. This is a huge time saver.
After Effects has served as the industry standard for many years now, which means there is a plethora of resources online and in print to help new (and current!) users locate information when they need it.

At first blush, After Effects' UI is overwhelming. Even after a decade of using it, I still get lost at times.
While the base-level product is fine for a lot of basic projects, anything with any kind of complexity is going to require 3rd-party plugins which can be rather expensive.
While this is not specific to After Effects, it is unfortunate that all of Adobe's products in the Creative Suite require the user to maintain a subscription. Subscription-based models benefit the company, not the user.

Most Important Features

Highly customizable and powerful engine for composition
Easy to use integration with other Adobe products (such as Premiere Pro)
Strong community of help around the product in form of tutorials, walkthroughs, etc.

Return on Investment

Using Adobe After Effects's built-in collaborative and library tools, we are able to save time/money when onboarding new producers to get them up and running quickly.

Key Insights

Do you think Adobe After Effects delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Adobe After Effects's feature set?

Yes

Did Adobe After Effects live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Adobe After Effects go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Adobe After Effects again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

Adobe After Effects is best used when the producer is creating graphics/effects used in video composition. For example, creating graphics or video overlays falls right in its wheelhouse. And while it can technically serve as a non-linear editing platform (such as Premiere Pro), this is not its strength. I have seen people try to use it this way and it always leads to more headaches and frustration in the long run.

Strong and powerful compositing tool, don't let the UI scare you off!

Overall Satisfaction with Adobe After Effects