38 Free Utility Presets for After Effects
Last week’s post on blur effects in After Effects was also a stealth release of Prolost EDC 2.0. I launched Prolost EDC in 2015, and I’ve updated it a few times since then, but this is the biggest refresh yet.
Tiny Timesavers
Prolost EDC is a collection of After Effects presets that are mostly very simple shortcuts to things I do all the time. For example, usually when I apply the Shift Channels effect, it’s to do something simple, like move the alpha channel into RGB, or copy the red channel to all three RGB channels. But these simple things actually require quite a few clicks in fussy little menus. With Prolost EDC installed, typing “Shift Channels” into the search field in the Effects and Presets panel brings up this list:
Now the simple thing I wanted to do is just a single click away.
More examples:
- Typing “grid” brings up the Grid effect and also my Grid by Width preset, that has the settings configured the way I usually want to use the Grid effect, with a single slider controlling the size of the squares.
- Type “ramp” and you’ll get the Gradient Ramp effect, as well as the EDC variants Linear Ramp Horizontal, Radial Ramp Corner, and Radial Ramp Side Edge, all of which use expressions to automatically size the gradient to useful configurations.
These are the simplest kind of Animation Presets you can make in After Effects — just single effects with custom settings. Whether or not you find mine useful, I highly recommend you make some of your own.
Color Space Conversions
Maybe my most-used effects.
- sRGB to Lin
- Lin to sRGB
- Cineon Log to Lin
- Cineon Lin to Log
- Sony S-Log2 Log to Lin
- Sony S-Log2 Lin to Log
- Alexa V3 LogC Log to Lin
- Alexa V3 LogC Lin to Log
- Lin to Kodak 2383 Emulation
Thrilling, right? But oh-so-handy.
Expressions With a Bow on Top
I have a library of commonly-used expressions. Where possible, I’ve packaged them up as presets to make them easier to apply, and included them in Prolost EDC. These presets range from simple to complex, and many have custom UIs.
- Prolost Wiggle Position provides a GUI for the greatest expression of them all,
wiggle(). An easy way to control the randomized motion this function creates. - Prolost Pixel Perfect provides checkboxes to force a layer’s Position and/or Anchor Point to snap to integer values. Handy when animating UI mockups or small title text.
- Prolost Pixels Per Frame lets you easily animate a 2D layer to move a certain number of pixels per frame in X and Y. This can dramatically increase the visual smoothness of scrolling credits.
- Prolost Spanner 2D is a GUI wrapper for a set of expressions that make one layer point at another. Use it for everything from motion graphics animations to animated characters.
- Prolost Front/Back Visibility gives you simple checkboxes to control a 3D layer’s Opacity based on whether the camera sees it from the front or back.
Prolost Arrow
Prolost Spanner 2D
Prolost Front/Back Visibility
Fun Silly Stuff
- Prolost Arrow draws a simple arrow on your image. It’s not going to replace Red Giant Universe’s Line effect (seriously that thing is amazing), but it’s handy for simple callouts, which is what I made it for.
- Prolost Mosaic by Size is new in 2.0. I built it when I realized that whenever I use the Mosaic effect, I almost always wind up doing math to let me set the size of the blocks in pixels.
- Prolost Fast Blur is also new in 2.0, and you can read all about it here.
Zero Dependencies
The Prolost EDC presets have no dependencies that can break, so they are safe to use in any project, even one you plan on sharing with someone who doesn’t have Prolost EDC.
Most of the Prolost EDC presets work all the way back to After Effects CS6.
Free, or Pay What You Want
Prolost EDC is a free download, no strings attached. I’d rather have you using Prolost EDC than scratching your head about whether or not it’s worth paying for.
But if you, like me, enjoy paying for useful tools, the option is there.
You can also feel free to pay nothing now and sign up for (very infrequent) updates. I’ll email you in a few weeks, and if you’ve found EDC useful, you’ll have the option to pay something then. You can unsubscribe from these updates at any time.
Free Updates Forever
The other reason to sign up is that you’ll be notified when there’s an update like this one, and you’ll be able to download it for free, right from the email. That’s right, I have the world’s stupidest subscription business model: Pay once at the beginning — or don’t — and get free updates forever.