Adobe recommends backing up all of your projects and media before updating the app.

To avoid compatibility issues, install the new version alongside your existing After Effects installations. This allows you to migrate projects to version 17.0 at your own pace. Creative Cloud allows for auto-updates of the Adobe apps, but this feature is not recommended for video users.

Check the System requirements to confirm that your hardware supports the latest version of After Effects.

Preview and playback performance improvements

This release of After Effects offers threading improvements which give a sharper and quicker preview playback. You can also leverage the new GPU-accelerated display system core to achieve accurate view of your designs without breaking your creative flow. GPU rendering enhances the preview playback performance, and gives you clear, and more detailed real-time preview of your project.

For more information about getting the best out of After Effects, see Basics of GPU in After Effects.

Enhanced EXR Workflows

You can now import layered EXR (OpenEXR Bitmap) files as compositions into After Effects to make the compositing process faster. Importing EXR files allows you to apply multiple effects to composition layers without going through a complex setup process first. You can work with each layer individually and apply effects to make your renders look more natural in their environment. Improved performance makes working with large files more responsive.

Faster shapes

This release of After Effects offers improved responsiveness when working with shapes to speed up creative iteration. With improved access to grouping controls, it is easier to navigate and manage large numbers of shapes.

• There is an overall performance improvements with projects containing shape layers.
• You can now right-click to group or ungroup shape layers. Select multiple shapes in the Timeline panel, right-click and select group/ungroup shapes. Another option is to select multiple shapes in the preview window, right-click and from the Mask and Shape path, use group/ungroup.

Graphics and text enhancements

This release of After Effects has multiple graphics and text enhancements.

Dropdown Menu Control effect

When creating Motion Graphics templates, you can now use the Dropdown Menu Control effect to hook up properties of layers in your project to a drop-down list. In the earlier versions, you hooked up properties of a layer to sliders and checkboxes to drive animations within your project. But now you can share sliders and checkboxes as editable controls that allows other editors to change their properties in Premiere Pro.

However, for more complex and lengthy animations, sliders and checkboxes might not always be intuitive. This menu makes it easy to adjusts multiple settings at once and design templates that are easier for editors in Premiere Pro.

For more information, see Use expressions to create drop-down lists in Motion Graphics templates.

Edit text properties with expressions

You can now use expressions to make global changes to text properties in your project. When you work with any text expressions and mogrts, the new expressions can control the text styling and the text itself. For example, your project has main and end titles, and you want a uniform text styling throughout. For this, use expressions to link the titles together, and update their styling at once. Reference properties of a single text layer to easily apply changes throughout the composition. This enables you to keep the font, size, and styling in sync across multiple text layers in After Effects and mogrts.

For more information, see Accessing text properties with expressions.

Alternate Text Rects

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• er Effects mogrt is created with Alternate Text Boxes enabled for a text control in the text Edit Properties dialog, use the specified alternate layer to determine the text rect for that text layer.
• In Premiere Pro, use this alternate text rect for that text layer, the red hover rectangle is the alternate text size or location. Click within the red hover rectangle shtould activate text edit on that aeText.
• These are referred to as fallback text box in the Source Text Properties box as well as in the warning you get on export if your mogrt needs a fallback box.
• When After Effects calculates the text rects for editing in Premiere Pro program monitor, it uses the alternate layer if it is set up.

For more information, see Create Motion Graphics templates with Essential Graphics panel.

Expression improvements

This release of After Effects offers the following expression improvements:

Expression Editor improvements

• You can now use the new scrolling functionality to prevent the scroll from adjusting incorrectly when the box is resized by typing the return character.
• Prevent numbers from matching in an autocomplete list if the variable begins with a number. Smarter autocomplete prevents from overriding closing brackets and quotes. 
• You can now scale font size for Hi-DPI displays. 
• Graph editor now commits changes in preferences for all the open graph editors.
• If you enable syntax highlight, the folding icon buttons in the UI now respect the default and background color, or the line numbers color and background color.

For more information, see Expression Editor.

Expression performance improvements

• After Effects now attempts to detect an expression that does not change throughout a comp and calculates the expression only once. Load your favorite expression-filled comp and experience the improved performance.
• Any expression using posterizeTime(0)now calculates only once for the entire comp, not on every frame.

Expanded format and better playback support

New format support includes Canon XF-HEVC.  Experience better playback when working with 10-bit H.265 HD/UHD and HEVC HD/UHD files. Improved ProRes decoding performance is also available. Plus, access legacy QuickTime files with new native support for MJPEG and Animation codec files with delta frames.

For more information, see Supported file formats | After Effects.

New Cineware renderer and Cinema 4D Lite R21

This release of After Effects introduces the new Cinema 4D Lite R21. Here are the details:

• When you install After Effects, the After Effects installer installs a Maxon Cinema 4D R21 folder on disk in your common applications location. 
• This folder includes Cinema 4D Lite R21. On first launch, you need to create a Maxon user account by following the onscreen directions. When you launch through Cineware, you may also be offered to start the full version of Cinema 4D in trial mode.
• An account is needed to launch Cinema 4D, but not for rendering in After Effects with Cineware or the Cinema 4D 3D renderer.

For more information, see Cinema 4D and Cineware.

Content-Aware Fill for video improvements

Remove unwanted objects from your video faster and more efficiently with the new performance improvements, and reduced memory usage.

For more information,  see Remove objects from your video with the Content-Aware Fill panel.

Other enhancements

• System Compatibility report - After Effects detects and alerts you to any known issues with specific hardware and older hardware drivers you are using on the computer.  If you are alerted to an issue, but you think it is not valid, submit a bug so we can review the compatibility issue directly. To understand whether your system is compatible with After Effects, see:
  • After Effects system requirements
  • How to manually install your Intel® Graphics Driver in Windows® 10
  • How to install drivers from NVIDIA
  • NVIDIA drivers for macOS

• OpenCL Support on Mac is removed. Please use Metal or Software Rendering.
  
• After Effects does not support the Ray-traced 3D renderer now.
• Previewing a comp where all frames are cached (or when cache frames before playback is enabled) should maintain target comp framerate even when interacting with the UI.
• Better honoring of native FPS as read from an EXR file
• Content Aware Fill updates:
  • Memory usage is reduced by 66%.
  • Performance is improved by 10-25%.
  • Fixes the warning dialog that shows on first time use of Content Aware Fill.
  • Fixes issue where small amounts of transparency can cause issues with reference frames.
• Select Label Group won't select shy layers, now also works from Edit menu.
• Fixed the non-drop frame timecode EXR sequences reported as drop-frame in After Effects.
• Updated Save as Previous Version to support AE versions 15 and 16.
  
• Shape Layer: Polystar no longer gets stuck at 0 inner radius.
• Updated Photoshop import library. Ensure your Photoshop files import and appear correctly in After Effects. 
  
• Update to MacOS rendering to use Metal and begin deprecation of OpenGL.
• Guides and rulers now snap to whole pixels when dragged in a composition. If you need smaller increments, right-click the guide to set a specific value.
• The Mocha plug-in is updated to the latest version.