After Effects is Adobe's remarkably powerful motion graphics and visual effects software. It's used by film and video producers who want to add visual effects to their films, as well as Web designers who want to add motion to their typography and design work. Version 5.0 now offers exciting new features, such as 3D compositing, hierarchical layering, 16-bit color channel capability, and powerful new animation and masking enhancements. After Effects 5 for Macintosh and Windows: Visual QuickPro Guide uses practical, task-based, visually formatted lessons to lead intermediate-to-advanced users through the After Effects interface and work environment, then moves on to explain how to import and manage footage, create compositions, view and edit layers, create masks, apply effects, and much more. The Visual QuickPro Guide approach emphasizes step-by-step instructions and concise explanations.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 7 Ratings

Great beginners and Quick Start Book - 2002-01-11
Reviewer Rating:
Thi Book is excellent for those who just want to get Affter Effects up and running and quickly jump into the application. It is not, however, going to teach you how to do stunning special effects, as this book is not geared for that purpose.

What this book does do however, is organize the various features of After Effects into an easy to read, quick to lookup format. This book wastes no time at all in getting you to find out what the heck that weird looking tiny button on a particular window does....as the title implies...this is a VISUAL instruction guide to After Effects.

If you are already familiar with After Effects and instead are looking for a book to teach you how to make amazing footage with it, then this is NOT the book you want.

If you are however, totally new to After effects and want to just get some darned footage, graphics and sound loaded into the application and apply some basic animated effects to these elements then this IS the book for you.

The main problem with After Effects is it's complex interface. The interface is very non-intuitive and extremely user unfriendly....that is until you know what the heck you are doing in it. This is where this book comes in. I was able to pick up this book and in about 20 mins pretty much know the basics of what the heck I was doing in After Effects. I am one of these people who hates long boring labourious explanations for simplistic concepts....in other words WHAT DOES THIS BUTTON DO and tell me in like one paragraph not a whole bloody chapter....that's exactly what this book does. It completely cuts to the chase in plain simple, easy to understand terms.

If you want to learn creative techniques and shapen your blending, composition and editing skills then stay far away from this book and go by a book for that purpose. But if you have just loaded up After Effects for the first time and are sitting there staring at it wondering why the damned application will not allow you to change the duration of footage, or how the heck to apply a rotation over time (instead of instantaneously) then this book will help you with those basic concepts and it will help you FAST!

And finally, cheers to the Author who made great efforts NOT to jam the book full of techie talk. Thank you so much for skipping the BS and using Plain English to explain things.

Great beginners and Quick Start Book - 2002-01-11
Reviewer Rating:
Thi Book is excellent for those who just want to get Affter Effects up and running and quickly jump into the application. It is not, however, going to teach you how to do stunning special effects, as this book is not geared for that purpose.

What this book does do however, is organize the various features of After Effects into an easy to read, quick to lookup format. This book wastes no time at all in getting you to find out what the heck that weird looking tiny button on a particular window does....as the title implies...this is a VISUAL instruction guide to After Effects.

If you are already familiar with After Effects and instead are looking for a book to teach you how to make amazing footage with it, then this is NOT the book you want.

If you are however, totally new to After effects and want to just get some darned footage, graphics and sound loaded into the application and apply some basic animated effects to these elements then this IS the book for you.

The main problem with After Effects is it's complex interface. The interface is very non-intuitive and extremely user unfriendly....that is until you know what the heck you are doing in it. This is where this book comes in. I was able to pick up this book and in about 20 mins pretty much know the basics of what the heck I was doing in After Effects. I am one of these people who hates long boring labourious explanations for simplistic concepts....in other words WHAT DOES THIS BUTTON DO and tell me in like one paragraph not a whole bloody chapter....that's exactly what this book does. It completely cuts to the chase in plain simple, easy to understand terms.

If you want to learn creative techniques and shapen your blending, composition and editing skills then stay far away from this book and go by a book for that purpose. But if you have just loaded up After Effects for the first time and are sitting there staring at it wondering why the damned application will not allow you to change the duration of footage, or how the heck to apply a rotation over time (instead of instantaneously) then this book will help you with those basic concepts and it will help you FAST!

And finally, cheers to the Author who made great efforts NOT to jam the book full of techie talk. Thank you so much for skipping the BS and using Plain English to explain things.

GREAT BOOK!!! - 2001-11-06
Reviewer Rating:
I found his book not intended to learn from. It is a great reference book to get you up to speed on what things are and where they are located. Example, whats motion math and where are the parameters. If you want to learn how to inpliment motion math into your work, you need to get another book. I would not be learning AE without this book. I hate reading the adobe pdf's. Also for (...)how can you complain. If your seriously interested in AE then you should have about every piece of info you can your hands on.

Excellent Book - 2004-03-09
Reviewer Rating:
This is a grate book, explaining every thing about after effects very deeply but in simple ways anyone can understand.
Also it has a lot of side bars explaining basic but valuable terms from the video/animation world that every animator should now about.
I think every one who will read this book will get all the tools he needs to become an after effects animator

And thank you very much Antony Bolante

NOT designer friendly! - 2006-10-09
Reviewer Rating:
I'm a graphic design student that is delving into the complex world of motion graphics, and I thought this book was convoluted and overly detailed. I fully acknowledge that I'm a beginner and tend to be more creative than technical, but I felt that perhaps the book could have been written with readers like myself in mind.

Trying to get through this was like my asking for directions somewhere, and having the person tell me seven different ways to get to the location. The fact that he would take a method to do something in the program and explain three different ways to do it just made me feel more confused.

I own an InDesign book made by Adobe that is a lot shorter and has a lot less text, and learned a lot faster just by using it as a reference and working on independent projects. I feel that this particular book has so much text in it, it would be hard to use it as a reference.

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