Natron is a free, open-source After Effects alternative for those seeking greater control and flexibility over the functions and interfaces they use. Top 20 Alternatives & Competitors to Adobe After Effects Browse options below. Based on reviewer data you can see how Adobe After Effects stacks up to the competition, check reviews from current & previous users in industries like Design, Marketing and Advertising, and Media Production, and find the best product for your business. After Effects Online Alternative #5. Clara.io - Online animation and rendering tool ($10/month) Cheap Software that Can Replace Adobe After Effects #6. Motion 5 - Powerful motion graphics software on mac ($49.9) Easy Alternative to Adobe After Effects #7.
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“I wonder if there is an After Effects alternative I can use that guarantees equally incredible video enhancement simply, quickly, and cheaply?”
Of course, there are plenty of Adobe After Effects alternatives you can use that are pretty affordable, and you won’t need a YouTube tutorial to learn how to use them. In case you are wondering what in the universe is After Effects, relax and read on. Now, in the world of videography, more often than not, one is required to edit and improve the overall outlook of their videos recorded on a phone or digital camera. To do so, you need After Effects. It is an unmatched technically-advanced motion software used for creating and editing video files. It is trendy in the market, hence if you an aspiring videographer or are interested in graphic design, read along.
Below are the ten best Adobe After Effects alternatives you need to know and try out!
10 Best Adobe After Effects Alternative
1. Filmora Video Editor
First on our list is the Filmora Video Editor (or Filmora Video Editor for Mac) that is excellent After Effects alternative for Mac as well as Windows operating system. It is a brilliant tool for compositing and editing video clips designed with an intuitive user interface. It has up-to-date editing modes and better control like key-framing over clips.
Features:
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• It performs tasks fast, has proxy files, and a changeable preview function that contributes to your productivity.
• It allows you to rectify the most common camera problems, including camera shake and fisheye.
• You can alter the aesthetic of a video clip with just one click.
• It has room for direct sharing of stories online.
• It lets you arrange media files in video tracks of 100.
2. Nuke
The second best After Effects alternative for Mac and Windows users is Nuke. It is prevalant and used in editing many Hollywood movies such as Avatar, Tron: Legacy, Transformers, and The Lord of The Rings. It is also highly utilized by animators since it is an adaptable, efficient, and highly featured video tool.
Price: $1629 quarterly or $4758 for the lifetime plan
Features:
• Nuke comes designed with vector paint tools, color correction, rotoscope, and much more.
• It makes it possible to work with images that have multiple opacity and color.
• It lets you monitor and make necessary alterations to objects precisely and fast.
• It articulately takes care of Lens’ distortion.
• It supports previewing change in 3D.
3. Apple Motion
Apple Motion is an After Effects alternative for Mac computers only. It makes it easier for its user to create amazing 2D and 3D animations, personalize fancy titles, transitions, and effects for Final Cut Pro, which happens to be an Apple software too. What makes Apple Motion a unique video tool is that it gets you immediate feedback on your work without rendition.
Price: $299.99
Features:
• It has High Dynamic Range graphics.
• It lets you drag and drop clips to create animations with a choice of up to 200 filters.
• It allows you to customize hue, brightness, and saturation with improved color wheels.
• It supports the importing of 360-degree media and developing 360-degree titles, generators, and effects.
4. Natron
The fifth on our list is an After Effects open-source alternative that is also free to use. Natron can be downloaded and installed on Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems. It is perfect for graphic design enthusiasts as it allows you to personalize the functions and the user interface, giving you more control over the software. Moreover, it is capable of generating numerous layers of masks, mattes, and shapes used in creating effects.
Price: Free
Features:
• It has a mighty and brilliant sheet editor.
• It has an excellent 2D and planner tracker.
• It developed with GPU and rendering ability.
• It accommodates a myriad of free and open-source OpenFX plugins.
• It supports the most popular image formats, including PNG, JPG, SVG, and PSD.
5. Blender
Blender is an Adobe After Effects alternative for free that is also open-source software. It is a cross-platform video tool designed specifically for creating animation effects. It is suitable for developing motion tracking, visual effects, thrilling 3D applications, or video games. You can customize Blender using its API for Python script.
Price: Free
Features:
• It is ideal for making incredible renders.
• It allows you to alter animation pose editor.
• It is capable of rendering to multi-layer OpenEXR files.
• Allows you to merge 2d and 3D images smoothly.
• It has onion skinning support for animation.
• It lets its users personalize interface layout as well as shortcuts.
6. Wax
Sixth in the list is Wax, which is another After Effects alternative for free for Windows users exclusively. It is instead a lightweight software that you can use single-handedly or as a plugin for other software like Sony Vegas. When you use Plugin Adapter, you have a variety of Wax plugins to select from like DirectX, Windows Movie Maker presets, or Virtual Dub filters.
Price: Free
Features:
• It allows for the creation of 2d and 3D video effects.
• It is an ideal plugin for Premiere.
• It lets the user utilize graphics acceleration for processing.
7. Autodesk Smoke
Autodesk Smoke is pretty expensive with quite a challenging user interface. You will have to put aside some minutes just to get acquitted with the software’s platform. Otherwise, it is an excellent video enhancer that lets you work on your clip on the timeline. It makes jaw-dropping 3D text effects.
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Price: $1545 per year
Features:
• It lets you scale your workflow using automated processes.
• It allows creating smart particle effects like water, snow, fire, and spray.
• It has a polygon subdivision surface that lets you develop organic and parametric objects.
• It provides selection and styling tools that make it easy to manipulate hair and fur directly in viewports.
8. Hitfilm
Hitfilm is an Adobe After Effects alternative that’s free for use. It is a feature-packaged VFX software that takes care of editing and compositing tasks exhaustively and simply. Designed with a lot of preset effects, it enables its users to create state-of-the-art videos effortlessly.
Price: Free
Features:
Best Alternatives To Adobe After Effects
• It has more than 820 VFX and presets.
• It accommodates mostly used media formats.
Free Alternatives To Adobe After Effects
• It supports audio visualization.
• It comes with surface studio effects that let you create animated texture.
9. Fusion 16
Fusion 16 is an excellent animation software designed with visual effects, VR, motion graphics, and 3D functionality. It makes it easier for the user to develop the impact by joining different kinds of photograph processing software. It is available for download on Windows and Linux platforms.
Price: Free or $299
Features:
• It accommodated popular Virtual Reality (VR) headsets.
• It designed to analyze live-action shots and integrate them into 3D camera movement.
• It is capable of automatically identifying the tracking details of an image.
• It has better performance thanks to extra GPU acceleration.
10. Continuum
Last but not least, on our list of best Adobe After Effects alternative is the Continuum software. This software is a plugin development by Boris FX. It lets you streamline workflow using up-to 17 different creative effects. Its cinema 4D integration makes it stand out.
Price: Free
Features:
• It lets you incorporate spotlights and moody rays on-stage performances.
• It enhances classical look in films with the help of the film style unit.
• There is a variety of choices for use in color correction and matching.
• It helps achieve advanced visual effects (VFX).
• It comes with plenty of presets to begin a project.
Conclusion
So, have you made your pick on the best Adobe After Effects alternative you would like to give a try?
Now, if you are a first time or potential graphic-designer cum videographer, it is advisable to start with user-friendly apps like Filmora9 Video Editor.
Go ahead and click on the links provided to download the app of your choice immediately. Enjoy.
Updated: January 1, 2021 Home » Freeware and Software Reviews
Adobe After Effect is arguably one of the best video effects editors in the market, it provides users with a robust suite of tools to enable both novice and professional video editors to compose what they need to in order to create amazing visual effects for videos and films.
Related 2021 Article ➤ 5 Free Adobe Premiere Pro And Apple Final Cut Pro Alternatives
Alternatives with a similar workflow include Small FXhome HitFilm, Blackmagic Design Fusion, and NUKE. Unfortunately, all 3 are not free. Here are 3 Adove After Effect alternatives that gives you blockbuster quality visual effects and compositing for free. You have full control to create your own unique effects using cutting edge technology.
↓ 01 – HitFilm Express Free | macOS | Windows
Video editing, VFX, and all the power you need to make something cool. Take your first step towards pro-filmmaking with our free starter software: HitFilm Express. Perfect for students, YouTubers, and beginner filmmakers. HitFilm Express gives you access to the most powerful free video-editor and VFX software on Earth and a community of 3.9 million filmmakers.
- Enhanced performance – You can customise your playback quality and paused quality. This allows you to experience really fast playback in the editor and trimmer, preventing lagging and making it much easier to time up edits/cuts. Not only can you playback at a different quality, you can now control that quality from the menu in the viewer. This allows you to make faster, snappier edits.
- Mask editing and rendering – Masking is used to manually create a matte. A matte determines which parts of a layer are visible. Practically, this means that masks are used to cut holes in your layers. HitFilm Express’s mask editing is faster than ever before enhancing and speeding up the rotoscoping process. As video quality increases, the software must be capable of handling everything it’s given which is why performance has been boosted.
- Professional formats – HitFilm Express’s UHD support and RAM preview ensures the best possible quality for your projects. Work with all footage, from your vertical smartphone shots to high-end professional cameradocumentaries, HitFilm can handle it.
- Animation tools – A large number of advanced animation tools are now available within both editor timelines. This huge update allows you to create and edit audio and video transitions without the need to create composite shots.
↓ 02 – NATRON | macOS | Windows | Linux
Natron is a powerful Digital Compositor that can handle of your 2D/2.5D needs. Its robust OIIO file formats and OpenFX architecture is what make Natron the most flexible open source compositor for the visual effects community. Its interface and functionally are the same across all platforms such as MacOS, Linux and Windows. Natron has a powerful keying, roto/rotopaint, 2D tracking tools that are staple for all current film production project that requires visual effects.
- 32 bits floating point linear color processing pipeline.
- Colorspace management handled by OpenColorIO.
- Dozens of file formats supported: EXR, DPX, TIFF, PSD, SVG, RAW, JPG, PNG … and more.
- Network rendering: Natron can be used as a command-line tool and can be integrated on a render farm manager such as Afanasy.
↓ 03 – PixelConduit | macOS
Everything in PixelConduit is designed for realtime performance and high color precision. With its flexible user interface and advanced extension possibilities, PixelConduit is at home in any scenario that deals with video, whether it’s live effects, dynamic video installations, or post-production work like compositing and workflow automation.
PixelConduit includes over 90 different image processing operations that support High Dynamic Range imaging (floating-point color) everywhere throughout the rendering pipeline. All the built-in tools such as blue/green screen keyers, various color correction tools and high-quality blurs can be combined without limitations thanks to the Conduit Effect System, a powerful node-based user interface.
- Fast – Render in realtime even above HD resolutions. Thanks to the optimizing Conduit Effect System, you can combine dozens of full-quality effects such as keyers, blurs and tone curves while still editing live.
- Precise – Conduit always works in floating-point color (128-bit RGBA), so you never have to worry about color artifacts like clipping or banding again.
- Affordable – PixelConduit for Mac is free with no limitations to available resolutions, file formats or effect complexity. Also version 4.0 includes the Complete edition features for free.
- Powerful – Like high-end video effects systems, PixelConduit uses a node-based interface that shines for creating complex effects. The user interface is modern, ergonomic and respects the desktop environment.
- Universal – PixelConduit is a lightweight app that is easy to integrate in your workflow.
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