[Todd Kopriva]

Different output formats and display devices have different color spaces (specifically, gamuts) associated with them. Also, many output formats, codecs, and devices have limited color bit depth. After Effects at 32-bpc is high-dynamic-range, meaning that it can represent a much vaster range and precision of colors than can be displayed on any device—and beyond the capabilities of most output formats (OpenEXR being one notable exception).

To see how something is going to look when you output it and view it on a specific device, use color management in After Effects, and specifically use the output simulation feature in the Composition panel.

Color management:
https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/color-management.html

HDR color:
https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/color-basics.html#color_depth_and_high_dynamic_range_color

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects product manager and curmudgeon
After Effects team blog
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[Todd Kopriva]

Start by trying the Paint Bucket effect:
https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/generate-effects.html#paint_bucket_effect

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects product manager and curmudgeon
After Effects team blog
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[Todd Kopriva]

Andrew Devis has done an excellent series of tutorials on color grading and color correction here on the COW. I collected them in this post:
https://blogs.adobe.com/premierepro/2011/07/color-correction-and-color-grading-tutorials-from-karl-soule-and-andrew-devis.html

I recommend going through those resources to get a good foundation for this kind of work.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects product manager and curmudgeon
After Effects team blog
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[Todd Kopriva]

Just doing a Google search pulls up the answer for the ones that don’t have generic names. E.g.:
https://aescripts.com/spill-slayer/

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects product manager and curmudgeon
After Effects team blog
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[Todd Kopriva]

See this:
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/684381

Start here to learn After Effects:
https://adobe.ly/AE_basics

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects product manager and curmudgeon
After Effects team blog
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[Todd Kopriva]

> how do you know

That seems like an odd question for me. 😉

I know because I am the product manager for After Effects and used to be one of the engineers that worked on this specific feature.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects product manager and curmudgeon
After Effects team blog
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[Todd Kopriva]

> i wonder if its possible to “update” the optix dll for CS6 with one that supports maxwell (3.6.x)

no

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects product manager and curmudgeon
After Effects team blog
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[Todd Kopriva]

As Michael indicates, After Effects uses the GPU for very little. Make your GPU buying decisions based on what you need for Premiere Pro, and you’ll generally be fine for After Effects. See the document that Michael linked to for details.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects product manager and curmudgeon
After Effects team blog
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[Todd Kopriva]

You could save an animation preset to reuse a bunch of effects, properties, keyframes, and expressions.

Or, if you want to keep things live, you can use the Copy With Property Links feature to link items to a master layer.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects product manager and curmudgeon
After Effects team blog
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[Todd Kopriva]

You are encountering a known bug that we have fixed in an update that we’ll be releasing in a few weeks.

As you have noted, the workaround is to quit the After Effects application to speed up the processing of After Effects compositions added to Premiere Pro using Dynamic Link.

In case you’re curious: The bug is that the full version of the After Effects application is sending far too many (hundreds per second) of a certain kind of message when communicating over Dynamic Link. The “headless” version of After Effects doesn’t send the same sort of message, so it’s not susceptible to this bug.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects product manager and curmudgeon
After Effects team blog
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