Adobe has introduced After Effects 24.0

The most significant change in After Effects 24.0 is the Next-Gen Roto Brush, an improved version of the Roto Brush tool in After Effects. It allows you to create roto-masks by roughly painting over the isolated part of a frame, and the program automatically generates a complete mask and extends it to the rest of the video frames.

As described, the new version may not be as significant an update as Roto Brush 2.0, which was released in 2020 and used machine learning for faster and more accurate mask generation. However, Adobe still considers it a "significant achievement" that improves the speed, quality of generated masks, and stability, especially on frames where the masked object is occluded by foreground objects and on challenging elements like hair and transparent objects.

The update also expands support for the OpenColorIO (OCIO) color management standard, which was introduced earlier this year in After Effects 23.2. After Effects now includes the OCIO Look Transform and OCIO CDL Transform effects in the "Color Correction" category. These effects allow for more precise color management and correction within the software.

Among other changes, there is a new set of scriptable "text and font goodies" designed to provide script-based access to text and font functionality within After Effects. This update aims to ensure that scripters have access to the same features available in After Effects' user interface. These enhancements can streamline text-related scripting tasks.

In addition, video encoding and decoding using HEVC (H.265) and H.264 codecs are now hardware-accelerated on discrete Intel Arc graphics processors. Decoding R3D (RED RAW) video material with GPU acceleration, previously available only on macOS, is now available on Windows as well, on GPUs with a minimum of 6GB of memory from AMD and NVIDIA.

After Effects 24.0 is available for Windows 10 and above and macOS 12.0 and above through a subscription model. The subscription cost for After Effects is $31.49 per month or $239.88 per year, while the All Apps subscription, which provides access to over 20 Adobe creative tools, costs $82.49 per month or $599.88 per year.