What's New - Adobe AFTER EFFECTS CS3 PROFESSIONAL User Manual

Adobe Labs
Adobe Labs gives you the opportunity to experience and evaluate new and emerging technologies and products from
Adobe.
At Adobe Labs, you have access to resources such as these:
• Prerelease software and technologies
• Code samples and best practices to accelerate your learning
• Early versions of product and technical documentation
• Forums, wiki-based content, and other collaborative resources to help you interact with like-minded developers
Adobe Labs fosters a collaborative software development process. In this environment, customers quickly become
productive with new products and technologies. Adobe Labs is also a forum for early feedback, which the Adobe
development teams use to create software that meets the needs and expectations of the community.
Visit Adobe Labs at www.adobe.com/go/labs.
User communities
User communities feature forums, blogs, and other avenues for users to share technologies, tools, and information.
Users can ask questions and find out how others are getting the most out of their software. User-to-user forums are
available in English, French, German, and Japanese; blogs are posted in a wide range of languages.
To participate in forums or blogs, visit www.adobe.com/communities.

What's new

New features
Shape layers
Use new shape drawing tools to create and animate vector graphics. Strokes and fills—including editable gradients—
can be added to shapes, and these properties can be animated. After Effects also includes shape layer operations
based on Adobe® Illustrator® vector effects. See "About shapes and shape layers" on page 313.
To see a video tutorial introducing shape layers, go to the Adobe website at www.adobe.com/go/vid0224. To see a
video tutorial on animating shape layers, go to the Adobe website at www.adobe.com/go/vid0225.
Puppet tools
Use Puppet tools to easily distort any image with natural, life-like motion. See "Animating with Puppet tools" on
page 227.
Photoshop layer styles and video layers
Layer styles and video layers are preserved when you import a Photoshop file. You can also add and animate layer
styles within After Effects and use advanced blending options. See "Layer styles" on page 171 and "Working with
Photoshop and After Effects" on page 28.
To see a video tutorial on importing Photoshop files, go to the Adobe website at www.adobe.com/go/vid0252.
AFTER EFFECTS CS3 11
User Guide