If you love animation and you want to create something of your own, you will need to decide which software to use. That will depend upon what you want to do. If you have characters in mind and would like to publish your work on a web platform, Adobe Animate will do it. If you are planning to do more complicated effects, like compositing, rotoscoping, or motion tracking, After Effects should be your choice.

What Can Adobe After Effects and Adobe Animate Do For You?

Adobe After Effects is a motion, video compositing, and visual effects program. You can fix errors during video post-production, fill in elements after the shoot is over, remove items you don’t want in the shot, and let your creativity flow freely with a huge collection of animation libraries. 

Because it works in layers, it is easy to experiment with an effect and then remove it if you don’t like it without damaging the original footage. After Effects lets you correct color, blur faces in a crowd, or make the crowd bigger. It is incredibly powerful!

Adobe Animate can create dynamic, interactive web animation. You can bring animated characters to life for games, cartoons, infographics, ads, or avatars, then publish your creation to many different platforms in numerous formats. After Effects and Animate are part of Adobe Creative Cloud along with Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Audition, and other well-known applications.

What Is Adobe After Effects?

After Effects is used for motion graphics animation, video compositing, motion tracking, creating special video effects, and 3D camera tracking. You can edit videos in After Effects, but in most cases, Premiere Pro is the choice for editing video.

The choice of whether to use Premiere Pro or After Effects depends upon two questions: what are you used to using and what are you doing with it? Premiere Pro is for video editing and allows you to create multiple channels for video and audio with tools to make cuts and transitions easily. It has some graphics abilities but they are not as powerful as After Effects.

While it can be used for editing video, After Effects excels in graphics and animation. It is a compositing program that allows you to create layers of effects and merge them together.

Experienced users develop a fondness for both programs and both being Adobe products, Premiere Pro and After Effects work very well together. A common practice is to start a project in Premiere Pro and then use After Effects to insert graphics and animation. Some people choose to create videos entirely in After Effects, but it is mostly used in post-production. 

What Is Adobe Animate?

Animate is an animation program from Adobe Systems, Inc. With Animate you can create 2D animation from original sketches or use some of the many libraries of available elements. You can create all kinds of interactive content and easily publish it anywhere: on television, on the internet, as a computer game, and even as augmented reality.

Along with other programs like Photoshop and Illustrator, Animate is part of Adobe Creative Cloud, a collection of applications for all aspects of image and sound editing. As part of the Cloud, Animate works well with other Adobe programs like Adobe Fresco, a drawing and painting application that gives you the power of Artificial Intelligence to control digital painting tools.

Essential Features of Adobe After Effects

After Effects can be used in a couple of ways. You can import video into Premiere Pro, edit it, and then import it into After Effects to insert graphics or alter scenes. You can also create a video entirely in After Effects. This is more common if you are working with animation. 

After Effects can be used for creating and inserting beginning titles and end credits, as well as any graphics or animation within the video, but that is only the beginning of its abilities. Three video editing functions that are commonly done through After Effects are compositing, rotoscoping, and motion tracking, but you can also use it to create animation.

Professional Animators and Motion Graphics Designers like After Effects because of its powerful animation tools and the ability to manipulate text. You can pull anything in from other programs like Photoshop and Illustrator and animate it. You can also draw on some of the many preset libraries available. 

Essential Features of Adobe Animate

Animate offers auto animation called "tweening," a process where animators create keyframes to map out the changes they want to make, and then the program automatically creates the "in-between" frames for you. It's the common way of doing it for a lot of media animation. 

Another plus for Animate is the ability to export animations to any platform. You can set your projects to HTML5 Canvas, WebGL, or a video file. If exporting to an interactive format like HTML 5 Canvas Animate also lets you include code snippets inside your projects without having to write code.

Like other Adobe products, Animate lets you customize your workspace and offers many presets and automations for making your workflow more efficient. You can choose to use the drawing tools within Animate or import assets from other programs like Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects. Additional features of Animate include layers and layer groups for timeline organization, symbols for reusable static or animated assets in a project, and powerful drawing tools like the new dynamic brush.

History of Adobe After Effects

After Effects has a long history. It was originally created by the Company of Science and Art in January of 1993 and acquired 6 months later by Aldus Corporation. Adobe bought Aldus in 1994. Originally, After Effects was only for Macs, but a Windows version come out in 1997. After Effects version 7 was the first to be linked to Premiere Pro, and it was included in Adobe Creative Cloud in 2013. 

History of Adobe Animate

Known by many names over time—FutureSplash Animator, MacromediaFlash, and Adobe Flash Professional—what eventually became Animate was initially developed by FutureWave in 1996. Macromedia purchased FutureWave later that year and renamed the product MacromediaFlash. Adobe acquired Macromedia in 2005 and the program was known as Adobe Flash until 2016, when it was renamed Animate because of the prevalence of web-based HTML applications. The current version of Adobe Animate came out in 2020. 

How to Purchase Adobe After Effects and Adobe Animate 

Adobe offers a monthly subscription to After Effects or Animate with a 7-day free trial available before purchase. This allows you to experiment with creating animation before deciding if you want to pay for the product. For a few dollars more a month, you can get the full Creative Cloud, which includes access to other Adobe applications like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Fresco, plus storage as well. The cost of a monthly subscription to After Effects or Animate is $20.99. A monthly subscription to Creative Cloud is $52.99. 

How to Learn Adobe After Effects and Adobe Animate 

Hands down, it is much easier to learn Animate than After Effects, which is probably Adobe’s most complicated software. While there are still many techniques to master in order to create good-looking animations, and the vector graphics tools take practice to be able to use them effectively, it is possible to learn Animate by watching tutorials and practicing on your own. That is much more difficult with After Effects, and many people find it easier to learn through classes.

You can choose classes that meet in-person or online to learn After Effects. Some people prefer to attend brick-and-mortar sessions when learning new information, but that isn’t always available. Live online classes have a similar set-up with a real-time, remote instructor who can answer questions and take control of your monitor—with permission—to show you how to do things. Training is part or full-time and available weekdays, weeknights, or weekends.

The best way to prepare for a career shift to a technical field like Motion Graphics Design is to enroll in a bootcamp or certificate program. These are intensive training courses that run from a few weeks to a few months and will cover motion graphics and animation in much more depth than tutorials can. Another plus of training is that you will leave class with a professional-quality sample video portfolio that you can show to prospective employers.

It’s easy to learn Adobe After Effects and start a new career. Check out Noble Desktop’s After Effects courses. Choose between in-person sessions in NYC at Noble’s location or sign up for live online After Effects courses and attend from anywhere. Use Noble Desktop’s Classes Near Me to find other courses in After Effects in your area.