• Adobe After Effects

  AE Purchase Questions

  Posted by Craig Larson on February 17, 2012 at 5:41 am

  Greetings:

  I’m looking at purchasing After Effects as a stand alone app, and I have a few questions:

  1. I have a 2011 MBP with Thunderbolt and 8gb of ram. I’m assuming this will be enough horsepower to run AE?

  2. I’ve seen the software priced at around $500. Is there better pricing anywhere? Also, would it be beneficial to buy an older version off eBay and then purchase an upgrade?

  3. What’s the best book/training/site for AE?

  Appreciate any input!

  Blessings,

  Craig Larson
  August Heat Productions
  Apple Valley, MN

  Craig Larson replied 14 years, 2 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Walter Soyka

  February 17, 2012 at 3:31 pm

  [Craig Larson] “1. I have a 2011 MBP with Thunderbolt and 8gb of ram. I’m assuming this will be enough horsepower to run AE?”

  AE’s performance scales with hardware. You can run AE on a MBP with 8 GB of RAM, but it’ll render a lot faster on a 6-core Mac Pro with 24 GB, and faster still on a 12-core with 48 GB.

  [Craig Larson] “2. I’ve seen the software priced at around $500. Is there better pricing anywhere? Also, would it be beneficial to buy an older version off eBay and then purchase an upgrade?”

  Retail for AE alone is $999.

  Adobe’s SWITCH campaign is back on, getting you the entire Production Premium suite for less than the cost of AE alone.

  Adobe Creative Cloud subscription licensing [link] will be available in the first half of this year, getting you the entire Creative Suite Master Collection for $50/mo. Until the new pricing plan kicks in, you can subscribe to AE alone [link] for $75/mo (month by month) or $50/mo (if you pay a whole year).

  [Craig Larson] “3. What’s the best book/training/site for AE?”

  If you’re new to After Effects, I’d recommend the following link, in which Adobe’s Todd Kopriva pulls together some important introductory materials:
  https://blogs.adobe.com/toddkopriva/2010/01/getting-started-with-after-eff.html

  I especially recommend the Video Copilot “Basic Training” series that Todd links to.

  Walter Soyka
  Principal & Designer at Keen Live
  Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
  RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
  Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events
• 

  Craig Larson

  February 24, 2012 at 5:21 pm

  Walter:

  Thanks for taking the time to respond and the thoroughness of your answers! Looking forward to diving into AE…

  Blessings,

  Craig Larson
  August Heat Productions
  Apple Valley, MN

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