The first half of the year was action-packed for After Effects, with months of big features, AI and freemium competition, and 3rd-parrty news. The current release of AE is June 2026 release (version 26.3).

With various Fixed issues and Known issues, the June 2026 release (version 26.3) included:

• Duplicate layers using Alt/Option-drag
• Change anchor point in a more efficient way
• Effect Controls panel modernization
• Color labels for effects
• Frame.io V4 panel

Adobe has announced that it’s acquiring Topaz Labs, which should be good news for subscribers since they make some of the best image enhancement, denoising, and upscaling tools available. See the rundown by Scott Simmons here on PVC.

For a summary demo of the newly released features, see What’s New in After Effects 26.3 from SternFX. After Effects Basics added his own take with After Effects Just Got a LOT Better. Eran, Jake Bartlett, SonduckFilm, and others have detailed demoes from the various releases this year.

Late addition: Jake In Motion posted his summary, After Effects 26.3 NEW Features.

Element Supply Co. now has about 50 inexpensive tools for a select number of apps, all adding unique controls to standard tools. The recent Element Glow attracted the attention of AE’s most steady communicators. Jake In Motion shared Element Glow for After Effects: First Impressions, while Eran Stern shared Element Glow: Worth the Hype?

People have always wanted to do this in AE… Build a 3D Book in After Effects with Physics Animated Letters using Motion Boutique Newton 4.

Jake In Motion covered something of the new effect Curl Noise a few month ago, after it appeared in the beta app. We can’t used it as found in 3D apps like Houdini and Blender, but we can imitate some of the effects with 3D layer stacks and other filters. Even before the effect appeared in AE, some users were looking for similar looks. See Animating Starry Night using Curl Noise in After Effects from ShiveringCactus: VFX, as well as Curl Wave in Stardust || After Effects Tutorial from Taiga2.

ToolsForMotion released Liquid Glass, a free effect plug-in for Apple-inspired refractions. They’re building more stuff for AE.

Manuel does Motion released LightsOn, an extension for lens flare creation. It’s inexpensive.

Fix Bad Footage FAST in Premiere and After Effects by Premiere Gal probably will come in handy.

Advanced 3D Object Tutorial In After Effects by flomotion uses Hi3D, while SternFX shared Realistic 3D Integration in After Effects.

VFX History: the origin of After Effects and How to run the original 1993 After Effects from ShiveringCactus: VFX is pretty good. Some observations:

• An early secret weapon was the outline of the American Film Institute class by Trish Meyer and Lynda Weinman.
• The simple animation in Jurassic Park (or early titles of The Simpsons) could have been easily done in Macromedia Director/MacroMind VideoWorks. John Knoll posted on the AOL forum and occasionally dropped by the AE user group.
• The AE-List mail server was the best place after the AOL forum shut down.
• Aharon Rabinowitz appeared prominently at Creative Cow.
• AE 1.1 (see every version) was shipped as “After Image” and included with the Supermac DigitalFilm analogue capture card. It wasn’t as slow as shown in emulation, but yeah, the AE 2.0 Time Layout window made AE the killer app. Similar timeline windows were already in 3D apps.

While we’re here… The Entire History of Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects was posted by ‘a funny looking squash.’ It’s well done though perhaps distanced since the app is 33 years old. For a history roundup on After Effects, see AEP’s Celebrating 25 years of Adobe After Effects here on PVC. A great resource for those interested was posted by Matt Silverman in a trip down memory lane with the After Effects Team from the an SFMOGRAPH user group meeting in March 2008. See also the free webinar: Two Decades of After Effects with Chris and Trish Meyer from 2013 (amazing it still plays).

After Effects is dead, according to Ethan Robbins, who is really pushing Fusion. There is new free and cheap competition though.

Permanent licenses are preferred but Fusion is not Resolve. Grant Petty favors the permanent license and hopefully pro level sales will continue to support Resolve development.  But AE is actively developed and still the best all-around, even if by inertia, third-party tools, and learning curves. Just switching away from Photoshop is hard if you’ve used it long. If you’re bored, see The CEO of DaVinci Resolve Just Said After Effects Is Dead — So I Proved It.

Jake In Motion says Motion Lab is Open: Live reveal + Q&A. Motion Lab is his private community for motion designers learning to use AI to build scripts, tools, extensions, and better motion design workflows. Jake uses primarily Claude by Anthropic and ChatGPT, and not limited to After Effects.

Kashu Universe has an introduction in Claude x After Effects | What Can It ACTUALLY Do? and Umair Fareed shared a video on using Claude code inside After Effects to get things done.

Matt Wolfe shared 9 Free AI Skills That Feel Like Cheat Codes. This isn’t one of his news roundups.

Theoretically Media posted Seedance Just Crushed Hollywood (And Everyone Missed How) on rights-holders. Is ByteDance Chinese or Israeli?

Curious Refuge posts his version of The Complete AI Anime Workflow (Professional Results).

Life imitates art in How a Will Smith Movie Inspired The Surveillance State by Bilawal Sidhu. This video traces the actual history of WAMI (Wide Area Motion Imagery): how it was developed by the Air Force, DARPA, and the CIA to track insurgent networks, how it quietly came home to police departments in cities like Baltimore, what a federal appeals court ultimately ruled about it, and where the technology stands today as it merges with AI and 3D reconstruction.