After Effects gives me total control over my vision, without the usual editing headaches. Even though the interface felt like a spaceship cockpit at first, the step-by-step tutorials had me making cool things right away without losing my mind. The workflow feels like a motion-focused version of Photoshop, and it lets me fine-tune every single millisecond of movement so I can build exactly what I’m picturing. On top of that, the seamless link with Premiere Pro is a huge time-saver: if I notice a typo, I can fix it immediately without the nightmare of rendering, exporting, and re-importing everything all over again. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

After Effects has a frustrating dark side that often undercuts its creative power. It has an infuriating habit of crashing at random for no apparent reason—even on high-end computers—which leaves me nervously hitting Save every couple of minutes just to avoid losing work. On top of that, it relentlessly chews through hard drive space with massive background cache files that can easily swallow 100 GB unless I’m constantly hunting them down and clearing them out.

I also deeply resent the subscription model, because it feels like I’m paying endless rent just to access my own creativity—and the moment I stop paying, I’m locked out of my own projects. And if I try to use it for standard video or audio editing, it turns into a complete nightmare: playback lags, tracks drift out of sync, and it becomes painfully obvious it’s built for special effects, not for simply cutting clips together. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Animation & Keyframing Control

Users rave about being able to animate literally anything — text, shapes, images — frame by frame or with expressions. The keyframing is described as smooth and the effects as cinematic, with a deep plugin ecosystem. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The biggest frustration for me is the rendering times — even on moderately complex projects, you end up waiting a lot, which really breaks your creative flow. It makes iteration feel slow when you just want to preview how something looks.

Performance in general is an issue. After Effects isn't well optimized, and it starts to drag noticeably once your compositions get heavier. You'd expect smoother handling by now, but it still eats through RAM and CPU like nothing else.

The system requirements are no joke either. You basically need a high-end machine to run it comfortably, which feels like a steep ask on top of an already expensive subscription.

And as someone at an intermediate level, the learning curve hit me hard. There's a point where the basics click, but going deeper into expressions, pre-comps, and advanced workflows feels like a whole other software. The interface doesn't make it easy to figure things out on your own — you're constantly relying on tutorials. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Once you learn the basics in the app, it becomes a very friendly platform where you can find and use all the controls like a pro.

It’s really helpful when you connect it with other apps, whether you’re creating presets for Premiere or adding extensions like Iconik. With this app, you can create animations and motion graphics super fast and easily, and what I like most is the layer system—it’s better and extremely useful.

After Effects has the best value when you purchase Creative Cloud, because you also get complementary apps such as Media Encoder, which helps a lot when you want faster results.

Also, whenever you have a doubt, it’s super easy to look for a tutorial, and you can even access some tutorials straight from the app.

And with the addition of the AI Firefly, you can create assists super fast that will help you with your animations.

with after facts you can handle heavy and complicated animations and turn them into a piece of cake Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

the render process wit media encoder is really slow Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

This software provides the layer of flare to make any video look better. There are no real alternatives to AE when it comes to visual effects at this level. It opens up so many doors that learning it, is in my opinion, essential for video pros. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

AE is not well optimized, so it can be very slow to work with sometimes. Adobe has such a near-monopoly on production software that I feel the dropped the ball more and more in recent years with bugs. The user experience is not good with the forced Creative Cloud app running to authenticate etc. The user experience surrounding the apps are often terrible. In the AI era, it would be nice to have generative motion graphics but that seems to be a gap no one is filling as of this review in 2026. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The best thing I like is that it lets me use a wide range of tools that are missing in Premiere Pro, which helps me create better motion graphics and visual effects for my shorts and videos. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

One thing that really annoys me is that it crashes a lot. Now that I have 16GB of RAM, it still uses almost all of it and then crashes anyway. Because of that, I have to press Ctrl + S to save every time I make any changes to the video. Also, sometimes the rendering takes a bit longer than it should. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like the Adobe ecosystem and how easily it integrates with other Adobe apps. Recently, they’ve also added a lot of AI features, like the AI Roto Brush that automatically cuts out objects. Earlier, this kind of work was very time-consuming, but now it takes just minutes. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I struggled the most with performance issues when I was using a low-spec laptop. That laptop was actually fine for office work, but for Adobe I felt like even 8 GB isn’t enough for smooth previews. Having more RAM, along with an SSD, would help a lot, and better graphics would help too. Not everyone has a heavy gaming laptop just for office use, and in that sense a MacBook is exceptional. The UI/UX also felt overwhelming when I opened it for the first time; it’s not really for beginners. There are so many tabs, panels, and menus. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What I like best about Adobe After Effects is its unmatched versatility in motion graphics and vFX composition.

The layer-based timeline paired with robust keyframing gives precise control over every element, making it easy to create complex animations. Its deep integration with the rest of the Adobe Creative Cloud (especially Premiere Pro via Dynamic Link) significantly speeds up my workflow by eliminating the need for constant rendering between edits. Additionally, the extensive ecosystem of third-party plugins and powerful expression controls offer limitless creative possibilities for advanced animation and rotoscoping. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

While After Effects is incredibly powerful, here are some of the most common downsides and pain points experienced during production:

Performance and RAM Consumption: It is notoriously resource-heavy. Real-time playback often requires caching heavy preview files directly into the RAM, which can quickly bottleneck your system and lead to sluggish performance or sudden crashes on complex compositions.

Outdated Audio Workflow: Handling audio within the software feels clunky and outdated. The timeline isn't designed for seamless audio editing or precise syncing, often forcing users to bounce back and forth between After Effects and Premiere Pro or Audition just to manage sound layers effectively.

Steep Learning Curve: The interface can be highly intimidating for beginners. Because it balances motion graphics, visual effects, and tracking tools all in one space, finding specific features or mastering expression-based workflows takes a significant amount of time and training. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I really find Adobe After Effects incredibly easy to use, especially compared to the keyframing interface of Premiere Pro, which I dislike. The shortcuts in After Effects are very friendly, which doubles my work speed. I love its versatility; I feel like I can make literally anything in After Effects. Once I got the hang of it, there are millions of creative options available. Anything I can imagine, I can recreate in After Effects. I also appreciate the recent discovery that I can make any vector shape look like a hand-drawn stroke, saving me the hassle of drawing those shapes. The setup was straightforward, just a simple one-click install as with all Adobe software, so props to Adobe for that. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The biggest issue I have with Adobe After Effects is the technological requirements. You really need a beefy computer to use it, which I believe is kind of gatekeeping a lot of artists. Also, the interface being hard to understand doesn't help much either. I feel like the software could be a bit lighter and not leave as much cache. Playback is also a struggle because every frame is freshly rendered. I believe there's a big scope for optimization. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

UX: The introduction of the Properties Panel and reorganised preferences has finally reduced the "twirl-down" fatigue, making common adjustments much faster to find.

Integration: The Dynamic Link remains its superpower, allowing you to update a composition in After Effects and see the changes instantly in Premiere Pro without a single render.

Pricing: While the subscription is a commitment, the Creative Cloud All Apps plan offers immense value by bundling 20+ professional tools (like Photoshop and Illustrator) that work hand-in-hand.

Performance: The new Lossless Compressed Playback is a game-changer, allowing you to cache longer, high-resolution previews without immediately maxing out your RAM or disk space.

Support: Between the Adobe Help Center's exhaustive documentation and a massive 30-year-old community of creators, you can find a tutorial or plugin for literally any visual effect imaginable.

If a clip is 2 seconds too short for your transition, AI can "hallucinate" and generate additional matching frames to extend the footage seamlessly Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Nested hierarchy - where you have to jump between multiple tabs to see how a change in one affects the final look.

This leads to "composition clutter." It makes it extremely difficult to track the timing of keyframes across the whole project, often requiring a "back-and-forth"

allow users to see the entire data flow of a project in one window without nesting. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It can create a wide range of motion graphics, and it’s easy to pick up if you’re already familiar with Adobe products. I also like the customisable workspace, and the ability to import Illustrator files to animate them. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The UI can feel overcomplicated at times, although it has improved a lot over the past five years. If you don’t have a powerful machine, rendering can be really laggy, and since it isn’t web-based, it can be difficult to get a clear preview—especially for more complex animations. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.