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ADOBE AFTER EFFECTS CS4
ADOBE:
For Windows
FRYS.com #: 5758232

Create compelling motion graphics and blockbuster visual effects with flexible tools that deliver unparalleled creative power, or jump-start projects using creative building blocks. Save time with efficient tools, and benefit from tight integration with Adobe's leading design applications. Whether you're working in broadcast and film or delivering work online or to emerging devices, Adobe After Effects CS4 software is a must-have tool.


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Price: $999.00
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Detailed Description


Innovative compositing and animation tools
Create high-impact communications by combining moving imagery, still images, graphics, text, and sound in 2D or 3D space and then animating virtually any aspect of each element.

Unmatched integration
Enjoy a streamlined workflow with support for Adobe Photoshop 3D and video layers, Adobe Illustrator graphics that maintain image integrity, and tight integration with Adobe Flash CS4 Professional, Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, Encore CS4, and Soundbooth CS4 software.

Unlimited creative options
Manipulate moving and still images using hundreds of effects that stylize, distort, generate new elements, and more; add or remove film grain; bring images and text to life by animating them with the Puppet tool.

Text and vector graphics creation and animation
Create text and vector graphics in After Effects using familiar Adobe tools, and then animate these elements to create visually innovative work.

Timesaving tools
Start projects quickly with animation presets and behaviors. Use Brainstorm to experiment and to refine designs. Learn fast with Tool Tips and training resources, and help speed the review process with Adobe Clip Notes.

Comprehensive masking and keying tools
Control which portions of a layer are visible by drawing and animating masks. Easily get precise results with flexible auto-tracing options and RotoBezier masks. Remove greenscreen backgrounds with Keylight and myriad supporting tools.

Powerful motion and keyframing controls
Apply motion blur to produce realistic animations. Slow down and speed up footage using Timewarp. Edit keyframes using the Graph Editor. Match source footage using the Motion Tracker. Remove unwanted movement with the Motion Stabilizer.

Responsive performance
Harness your computer's processing power with easier to adjust multicore and graphics acceleration. Disk caching allows you to spend less time waiting and more time creating. Distribute rendering across your network to maximize output performance.

Professional results for every media type
Produce animated content for virtually any media, from the web and mobile devices to film and broadcast, thanks to comprehensive output format support. Use the Render Queue or background render with the Adobe Media Encoder.

High-fidelity color
Get precise, predictable color with high dynamic range (32-bit-per-channel, floating point) color, the use of ICC-based color management tools, and ProEXR support for exchanging files with other applications that support high dynamic range color.

Searchable timelines and projects plus easier nested composition navigation
As projects become deeper and more complex, it can be challenging to find a specific layer or other asset--especially on deadline or when you're working in an unfamiliar project. After Effects CS4 eliminates this frustration by including live search functions directly inside the Timeline and Project panels. You can quickly find project elements, keyframeable properties, effects, and more. This ability to directly target properties saves considerable time scrolling through lists and twirling open layers to manually reveal their contents.

You can search projects for specific footage items or footage properties, such as scanning by file type to find all the SWF files that have been imported, or flagging whether or not an updated logo is currently being used in a composition. You can also search timelines by layer names, properties, comments or expressions, effect names or parameters, and more. Search results appear as soon as you start typing, and can be limited to selected layers or may encompass your entire timeline or project.

Many artists use nested compositions inside After Effects as a way to break complex projects into smaller, more manageable elements. This allows both the creation of elaborate animation chains and also the ability to make quick updates to a project where a change in one composition may be immediately rippled out through other comps.

To make these composition hierarchies easier to navigate, After Effects CS4 features a Composition navigator along the top of each Composition panel, which displays the names of the incoming (nested) compositions as well as the outgoing (parent) compositions for the currently active composition. These compositions can be opened to access the Mini-Flowchart, which reveals the nesting organization of related compositions. This allows you to more easily visualize and navigate the structure of complex projects: You merely have to click on a composition's name in the Mini-Flowchart to instantly switch to it.

These features make it easier for you to familiarize yourself with and to navigate through projects created by other After Effects artists, or to recall the structure of an older project which now needs updating.

Photoshop 3D layers import
A powerful new technology in Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended allows you to place 3D objects on layers, paint them using the industry-standard tools in Photoshop, and render them along with the rest of your imagery. With After Effects CS4, you can import and animate Photoshop 3D layers in your composition, where they can be viewed as 3D objects using cameras in After Effects. You can also apply effects to change the layers' appearance over time, composite 3D layers with other objects (including animated text and shape layers, live-action video, and sound), and render the result as you would any other project element.

This feature creates a flexible new 3D workflow in which artists, instead of rendering a 3D scene from within a dedicated 3D application and treating it as finished footage inside After Effects, can import and paint objects in Photoshop, import the PSD file with the 3D layer into After Effects, and further process and animate the objects without having to go back to a 3D application and re-render the result. Combined with the Vanishing Point feature introduced in Creative Suite 3, artists have a growing list of options for how they can create 3D worlds without the need to purchase and learn dedicated 3D software.

Cartoon effect
The new Cartoon effect allows you to create new looks for your video or other animated imagery, instantly applying the appearance of cel animation or watercolor paintings to live action or to computer-generated 3D imagery. It's a creative tool that allows you to quickly stylize footage, using a deep set of controls to create your own fresh looks. This makes it equally useful for motion graphics and for interactive designers interested in crafting new visual styles as well as videographers and editors who want to create unique visuals without the painstaking process of hand-drawing every frame. You can even use the Cartoon effect to rescue low-resolution or poor-quality footage by smoothing and abstracting it.

This effect--found in the Effects > Stylize category--provides three essential enhancements. First, it performs a smoothing operation to remove distracting image details. Second, it finds the edges between the remaining details in order to highlight them and provide a border to help separate the areas of color. Third, it fills in the colors and gradients between the edges. You have full control over each of these enhancements through a set of separate Fill and Edge parameters as well as Advanced parameters. The Cartoon effect is also graphics processing unit (GPU) accelerated, so you can quickly experiment with refinements or try out whole new looks.

Independent keyframing of X, Y, and Z position plus other 3D compositing enhancements
In addition to the Photoshop 3D layers import feature mentioned earlier, After Effects CS4 contains two other major enhancements that make working in 3D more fluid.

X-, Y-, and Z-position properties can be keyframed separately, greatly easing the crafting of complex animation moves, such as having a camera smoothly change elevations and then hold while maintaining a constant forward or sideways velocity, or creating bounce-style actions. These separate properties may be collapsed back into a unified set of keyframes that control all properties at once.

A new Unified Camera tool takes advantage of a three-button mouse, allowing you to quickly switch between Track XY, Track Z, and Orbit movements. This allows you to work more intuitively while setting up camera positions. It also makes the experience of using cameras in After Effects more similar to that in 3D modeling applications.

Rich media composition export from After Effects to Adobe Flash CS4 Professional
Compelling motion design is essential in both the broadcast and online worlds. As the languages and experiences of interactive design and traditional motion graphics continue to converge, it is only natural that you will want to expand your personal toolset. While previously you could export text animations and other elements from After Effects to SWF format and render movies to FLV format, now you can also export After Effects compositionsas layered projects that can be imported into Flash CS4 Professional. FLV, PNG, and JPG source footage files are passed directly to the Flash Professional project without transcoding. Animated transformations, such as scale and rotation, are preserved, and can be edited in Flash Professional. Other footage types and layers with effects are automatically converted to Flash compatible graphics.

Imagineer Systems' Mocha for Adobe After Effects for 2.5D planar motion tracking
After Effects CS4 includes Imagineer Systems' Mocha for Adobe After Effects, a standalone application with advanced 2.5D planar motion tracking. Mocha for Adobe After Effects provides advanced motion tracking and makes it easier to tackle difficult motion-tracking challenges, such as tracking footage with objects moving out of the frame, lack of detail in the underlying footage, motion blur, and heavy grain or noise. Now you can avoid the guesswork and inaccuracies that result from hand-tracking challenging shots. Mocha also speeds up the process of generating solid four-point tracks, yielding position, scale, rotation, and shear information, resulting in perspective-matched tracks.

Mocha for Adobe After Effects is resolution independent and can import Cineon, DPX, TGA, TIF, JPEG, PNG, SGI, and QuickTime files with up to 16 bits per color channel. It then exports 2D tracking data that can be loaded into After Effects. This valuable software is included with After Effects CS4 (along with powerful favorites Color Finesse from Synthetic Aperture and Keylight from The Foundry).

Integrated workflow for mobile-device authoring
Authoring content for mobile devices is a growing field of work for editors, producers, and motion graphics artists. But this new field presents new challenges: Screen dimensions and video frame rates vary greatly from one mobile device to another. Adobe Device Central CS4 software--included with After Effects CS4--contains an extensive library of device profiles that provide information about these mobile devices. Device Central can then use these profiles to automatically create a set of After Effects compositions tailored for your selected devices.

You create your design in a master composition. This master comp is then used to feed a set of device-specific compositions, each reflecting the screen size and other parameters of your chosen devices. You can use the powerful After Effects Render Queue to render and export a set of finished movies for a large number of mobile devices in one batch render job. A special preview composition is also created that consists of a grid of your device-specific compositions, so that you can preview your master composition in the context of several devices simultaneously.

Project intelligence through XMP metadata
Workflow specialists and producers are sure to love the new support for XMP metadata in After Effects CS4 and other Adobe video and audio software. Among other capabilities, you can easily identify the job number or work ticket associated with any asset, make better informed decisions about the assets you use, and streamline the rights-auditing process by efficiently viewing copyright information.

Not only is asset metadata retained while in After Effects, but you can add new project and layer-level metadata during the render stage to streamline project tracking and automate asset auditing. For example, you can add a list of assets used in a composition, or the durations of stock footage clips, used to aid in determining payment for rights managed assets. Markers in the source composition will be saved in the rendered file, and will appear as layer markers when you re-import the file. You can also use scripting to access and manipulate metadata. This makes it possible to add intelligence to your After Effects CS4 workflows.

Numerous interface and workflow improvements
Dozens of enhancements in every area make After Effects more productive and fun to use. Here are but a few of the additional enhancements contained in After Effects CS4:

* Auto-resolution to optimize interaction speed by rendering only the pixels you need for your current zoom level
* Easier settings management to optimize memory and multi-core processing
* ProEXR support for working with layered high dynamic range (HDR) image files
* Native P2 plus Sony XDCAM EX and XDCAM HD support
* Longer names for layers, comps, folders, and other items
* New Turbulent Noise and Bilateral Blur effects
* Option for converting text to mask outlines or a shape layer
* Duration specification for markers
* Center-cut safe areas for ensuring widescreen projects look good on 4:3 displays
* Composition panel control to simulate output, for improved color management
* 32-bit-per-channel color for shape layers, Depth Of Field Blur effect, and Reduce Interlace Flicker effect
* Interpret Footage button in the Project panel
* Wiggle position, scale, rotation, and opacity for shape layers
* Import Adobe Premiere Pro time remapping data 


Requirements

* 1.5GHz or faster processor**
* Microsoft® Windows® XP with Service Pack 2 (Service Pack 3 recommended) or Windows Vista® Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise with Service Pack 1 (certified for 32-bit Windows XP and 32-bit and 64-bit Windows Vista)
* 2GB of RAM
* 1.3GB of available hard-disk space for installation, plus 2GB of space for optional content; additional free space required during installation (cannot install on flash-based storage devices)
* 1,280x900 display with OpenGL 2.0?compatible graphics card
* DVD-ROM drive
* QuickTime 7.4.5 software required to use QuickTime features
* Broadband Internet connection required for online services?
** SSE2-enabled processor required for AMD systems
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