I'm always happy to receive new product releases from Adobe to review. So when Adobe's Creative Suite Production Studio Premium package landed on my desk you can imagine my excitement. I'll be reviewing the whole Suite next month but in the interim I decided a closer look at this little gem "Adobe After Effects 7.0 Professional" was very necessary.

Its been around for quite a while and is a respected member of the post-production software community. So, what does After Effects do? Simply put, its a tool which allows you to add visual effects to your film productions. It has a whole swag of effects and animation presets which are included in the bundle and, probably most impressively, it has the ability to integrate with Adobe software for film, video, DVD and exports Flash Video (FLV).

Version 7.0 of After Effects offers a level of sophistication and precision not seen before and I agree with the general consensus that this version was well worth the wait.

New Features

As mentioned, there are quite a few new features and I won't mention them all here ... For the complete rundown head off to the official site Adobe After Effects.

The new docked interface not only looks terrific it also saves time by not having to frustratingly move menus about to find something underneath or view more of the "stage". Although the decision to dock or undock is completely up to the user as the work areas are customisable as well.

The Graph Editor allows the creation of precise animations, there is complete visual control over keyframe editing and synchronization of animated properties across layers.

Real-time, high-fidelity OpenGL support with advanced OpenGL 2.0 capabilities including support for blending modes as well as motion blur, anti-aliasing, track mattes, high-quality shadows and transparency, and accelerated rendering of common effects.

Text animation and titling effects ... use the standard Adobe Text tool, or edit and animate text from Photoshop; instantly apply text Animation Presets.

Adobe integration ... the abillity to import Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator files with attributes preserved, and, in Windows, import Adobe Premiere Pro projects, add motion to static Adobe Encore DVD software menus, export After Effects projects as Adobe Premiere Pro projects, FLV, and more.

This is a great product and one that professional film makers use but it is also a relevant product for graphic and web designers who want to save themselves some design time. I heartily give Adobe After Effects 7.0 Professional a double thumbs up.