What’s New in AE – December 2022

We’ll be covering both the October (23.0) and December (23.1) releases in this post.

After Effects v23.0 has several great quality-of-life (QoL) features. Some of them might seem small, but they add up to some great time and workflow saving! Here are some of the bigger features…

December Release (v23.1)

This release has one main headlining feature: The inclusion of and support for the 2023 release of Cinema4D. For more details about what’s included in C4D 2023, take a look at Maxon’s product page.

October Release (v23.0)

Selectable Track Mattes

Track mattes no longer need to be immediately above the target layer! And a single layer can be used in multiple track matte selections! No more duplicating your matte layer several times or messing up your meticulous layer stack. More details on the new way of working with track mattes can be found on the Adobe Help pages.

h.264 Encoding in the Render Queue

No need to send renders to Media Encoder just to get an h.264/mp4 render!

New Animation Presets

The animation presets included in After Effects have been pretty much the same (though maybe underutilized) for years. 23.0 includes 50 new animation presets created by the After Effects community.

New Timeline Navigation

Did you know you could use J and K to move between visible keyframes and markers in the timeline? Now you can also use SHIFT with those keys to navigate _only_ the selected layer or property’s keyframes and markers. It’s a nice way to jump around between different points in your animation.

What about the Beta?

If you’re someone who likes living in the beta release, there’s a few new features to test out. Or if you just want to see what’s coming in future AE releases, here’s the list:

3D Model Import

Yep. 3D models inside AE.

Properties Panel

A little less clicking around and twirling open layers in the timeline, this is a welcome feature many people are looking forward to seeing in the full release.

OpenColorIO and ACES Color Management

Color management is one of those things that was always very finicky in AE. The new color management options aim to help with that.