Adobe After Effects (2026) review

Date:
Sun, 26 Apr 2026 06:15:00 +0000

Description:
Its hard to compete with Adobe After Effects when it comes to creating impressive visual effects, and with version 26, its gonna be even harder.
Come with me, as we take a look at some of the biggest new features that have just been released

FULL STORY ======================================================================Adobe After Effects is the juggernaut of motion design and visual effects software. Youd think a tool thats been around for 33 years couldnt possibly bring new and exciting features to the table, right?

Well version 26 certainly proves you can teach an old dog some impressive new tricks. What does After Effects do, I hear you ask? Well, as our pick for
best VFX software around, any visual effects you can apply to video, such as animated text, graphics and illustrations, fancy overlays, and so much more, you can create inside After Effects and apply to your film project. Your creative options are staggeringly vast, and I found go even further with this latest version. Adobe After Effects subscription options: 12 month plan - 19.97 per month (239.64 total cost) Adobe After Effects: Pricing & plans Professional software at a professional price Subscriptions aren't cheap but there are two options here Free 14-day trial If you know Adobe, youll know
you cant purchase their pro apps: you can only rent them, although you do
have a few subscription options available to you.

First off, you could just subscribe to After Effects on its own. This would cost you, as an individual, $38 per month, or $456 for the year (other companies give you a discount when paying for the year upfront, but theres no such benefit here).

Alternatively, you could invest in the Creative Cloud Pro plan, which
includes over 20 of Adobes professional software, including Photoshop , Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro, and a host of others, and of course, After Effects. Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed! Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners
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Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.

This bundle of powerful tools will set you back $100 a month per user, or $1,200 for the year in advance. Again, no advantage to giving them all your money in one go.

This isnt cheap, but then again, this is advanced software youll be using (students can get it for much less).

If you like the idea of trying before buying, you can get yourself a free 14-day trial, which will automatically enrol you into the monthly or yearly subscription upon completion (your choice), so make sure you cancel before that happens should you decide this isnt for you.

Now thats out of the way, lets take a look at what I feel are some of the
most important new features in After Effects 26. Adobe After Effects:
Features (Image credit: Adobe // Future) Seamless VFX creations Steep
learning curve New, useful and long requested featured added, including variable fonts support and native SVG import By default, After Effects 26 greatly improves playback performance thanks to support for lossless compressed frames. Behind the scenes, it compresses your clips without losing quality so they take up less space in your disk cache. This means your previews can be longer or you can have more of them before your cache runs full.

Of course, you have complete control over this. Should you wish to disable that feature, youll find the relevant tick box in the Disk Settings (look for Enable Compressed Frames (Lossless))

After Effects (finally!) fully supports Illustrator files, enabling you to animate your graphic designs. This includes support for Illustrator
gradients.

One feature I found particularly useful is the ability to crop your composition based on a selected asset. Associated with that is a feature I really liked: being able to work with SVG files natively, and even have
access to, and being able to, manipulate every vector path that make up the selected illustration. The only downside is the mess that is the naming of
the various paths and groups. Still, being able to modify each path over time is a fantastic feature for After Effects to have. (Image credit: Adobe // Future) Another cool addition is support for variable fonts. These are fantastic for creating complex animations with ease, as they allow you to
make changes to the fonts weight, width, and more, all keyframeable, and you can transform individual letters that way too. These parameters are accessed through an icon to the right of the fonts name in the Text panel.

Variable fonts are a special type of font with various modifiable axes - the more a font has the more parameters youre able to alter. If you dont have any such fonts in your collection, dont worry: Adobe has a large collection of them here , and do does Google here . (Image credit: Adobe // Future) If
youve ever needed to work with a flame effect, but have struggled to key out the white or black backdrop, youll love the new Unmult effect. Just drag it onto the clips layer in your composition, and as if by magic, the backgrounds gone, and the fire has a perfect blend of vibrancy and transparency. You do have some parameters you can control (the most notable one being able to choose between keying out a black or white backdrop) but I found the default options worked fantastically well as is.

There are also additional audio controls with 26, such as gate, compressor, and distortion effects, and youll notice the Preferences window has been completely reorganised. OCD people might not like that, but the new layout should make it easier to find what youre after quicker - once youve got used to it.

All this is good, really good in fact, but the biggest tentpole feature has got to be the native inclusion of 3D shape creation Adobe After Effects: 3D Shape Creation (Image credit: Adobe // Future) Create, control, alter, and manipulate 3D shapes natively All happens within After Effects A fantastic
and most welcome addition This is a big one: theres a 3D shape creation tool (conveniently located to the right of the shape creation icon in the top toolbar). With it, you gain access to 6 basic shapes: cube, sphere, plain, doughnut, cone, and cylinder, but thats far from the end of it; you also have parameters that allow you to change many aspects of those shapes, the most versatile one seems to be the cone in my experience.

I found the bevel tool to be quite useful - it rounds the edges of your cube for instance, and it affects the cone in interesting ways. Slices is another good parameter - you could use it to add ridges to the donut shape for instance, or turn the cone into a multi-wedged cylinder. The variety and options are generous. You can of course animate these shapes over time, and even light them all natively inside After Effects. (Image credit: Adobe // Future) But thats not all: since Adobe owns Substance3D, you can use that service straight from After Effects. Well.. kind of: its certainly not as seamless as it could be, but its a fantastic way to apply different and interesting skins to your shapes. Scroll down the properties sidebar until
you find the Material section. Youll find a drop down menu there with the Get Substance Community Assets command.

Youll then be taken out of After Effects for the next part, which is far from user friendly, to a webpage from which you can browse all available materials - and theres thousands of them - although not all are compatible with After Effects. (Image credit: Adobe // Future) Do a search for .sbsar and it should filter out those that arent. You then download the skins youre interested in, and drag those into your project. Only then will they appear in the sidebars Material drop down menu.

The whole acquiring process feels clunky, but once theyre in your project,
all you need to do is select a shape, then choose the right material from
that menu, and youre done. I mean, not quite: you have parameters you can alter to help you get the look youre after, but at the end of the day, clunkiness aside, its a simple enough process to add a skin to a 3D shape.

All in all, its an amazing and very welcome addition to an already incredibly powerful application. Should I buy? Buy it if... You need to design and animate graphic design assets - lets face it, After Effect is the go-to app for such work, and the new features will make this software even more useful.

Don't buy it if... You don't want another expensive subscription model, and your needs are much simpler than the gargantuan options available with After Effects. We tested the best video editing apps - and here are our top picks Adobe After Effects deals Adobe After Effects 19.97 /mth View at Adobe Adobe CC All Apps 49.94 /mth View at Adobe



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/pro/software-services/adobe-after-effects-2026-revie w


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