Why use Affter Effects over Photoshop

[M V]

I am seeing more and more that rendering folks are using AE to do their post comp work. What are the advantages over Photoshop?

[Camby1298]

The biggest one being that the files can be live linked. If you have a scene that is going to have multiple adjustments (furniture being swapped out, switch materials etc), you set up your color management, curves etc once, and just re-render over the linked image file(s), plus you only have to set Render Elements on top of your base image and change the blending mode once (as long as you render over the render elements).

 

And there are some filters available in AE that are useful, and not found in PS.

[M V]

Seems to me that you could live link your comp layers by using Place when you insert the layer. I dont think it auto updates though, you have to reload it manually. I never thought that AE could or would be used for stills.

[Scott Schroeder]

Non destructive layers by default, meaning that your adjustments are not baked into your layer as they are in Photoshop unless you choose a new adjustment layer.

 

You don't have to manually load your source footage every time you re-render. So for a comp with multiple render elements, its very handy that as soon as you open your file your latest renders are updated.

 

Ultimately, they both are strong and one isn't better than the other. There's no reason to jump ship from Photoshop to AE for just stills.

 

I just use AE because I use it for video post as well as stills post. So I just keep my post-work in all one piece of software. AE has a lot stronger and more diverse color keying tools as well, and I tend to use those a lot. If I need to really paint something into a render, like fix a small GI glitch, then I'll use Photoshop and save the PSD file and bring that back into AE to finish up the final comp.

[notamondayfan]

Also AE fully supports 32bit floating point images, which gives much better exposure control.

 

Plus AE has Colour Finesse which is great for colour adjustments and quick grading.

[Justin Hunt]

I have been playing with Composit and it has some really great lense tools, good for glares and CA. Just wish it could output .mov files though.

 

jhv

[danb4026]

What's Composit? Never heard of that.

[Justin Hunt]

Its the new node ased compositor that started to ship with Max2011. It has taken over from Toxic which was the replacment for combustion.

 

jhv

[BVI]

Non-destructive editing and some great plugins and effects (you can swap out your beauty pass and still keep your effects). Also a very small jump to animation in a single app.

[ricah.lacno]

After effect is i think great for color adjustments. Photoshop provides us with many options, i have been using it since like 2 years and really had a great learning managing my photographs really well