The current release of Adobe After Effects is September 2025 (25.5), which includes new features and workflow improvements.

Previous release details can be found in recent roundups. The September 2025 (25.5) release includes important fixes, known issues, and some added features like:

• Quickly offset your layers and keyframes
• Copy and paste only the text formatting
• Support for CICP metadata
• Learn about Effects before applying them (info icon)
• Automatically relaunch when required by preferences or features
• New Product Community and Creator resources with feedback, stock items, and tutorials.

Here’s what’s new in the current After Effects Beta, version 25.6 build 36 (hmm Aug 21, 2025):

There’s something new for developers, the 25.6 SDK Release. The AE SDK now supports building effects for Windows on Arm Natively. See also docsforadobe.

If you want a peek behind the curtain, Plugin Everything has a series of tutorials, starting with How To Create An After Effects Plugin – Development Tutorial. Also, Code and Motion has a variety of scripting tutorials, including some on Plugin Development for After Effects.

And for a quick overview, see After Effects API: How it’s used for automating video creation by Ivan Stankov at Plainly, which offers resources on After Effects video automation. Plainly also offers tutorials and resource videos, like These 10 After Effects Plugins Saved Me 1000+ Hours and 15 best After Effects tools you need to use [2025].

Plugin Play is a new curated, multi‑vendor marketplace for pro extensions and creative assets that run inside Adobe After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Illustrator. The intent is to unify discovery, licensing, and distribution so you can find, install, and use tools fast. They’ve gone with all in-one-pricing in 3 tiers, starting with free stuff. School of Motion has an intro:

Francis-Crossman of Adobe explained new big boy masking features in Premiere Pro Beta in Now in Premiere Pro Beta: New Masking Tools. This beta forum page also has a nice discussion of weaknesses for those with lesser amounts of GPU RAM, as well as some familiar faces offering useful tips. There’s more info in Adobe Help. Note that you can drag the Pen Tool mask to make it an opacity mask.

These tools are fast and good enough in beta for Justin Serran (pictured) to ask, Did Adobe Just Kill Rotoscoping? Premiere Pro Object Selection vs After Effects RotoBrush 3.0.

Premiere Gal covered some recent feature updates that shipped in Premiere Pro 2025 Just Got Way Cooler! And yes, as detailed by Scott Simmons, Adobe acquires Film Impact, brings it Premiere Pro 25.5.

Adobe is taking mobile video editing competition more seriously. See Adobe Premiere on iPhone: now available here on PVC. Adobe Rush is gone. The new app is Apple-only to start.

Here’s a deeper demo from Dave Werner:

Several months ago, Casey Faris posted Sick of After Effects? Switch to Fusion in 2025 for VFX and Motion Graphics!, then recently Switch From Adobe Premiere to DaVinci Resolve – The Ultimate Guide (2025). If Adobe decides to stop developing After Effects in favor of AI & Premiere, we may see videos like this become more popular.

Adobe expanded AI model access with Firefly Boards  redefining ideation with new models and AI-powered exploration features. They’re adding Google Nano Banana, Black Forest Labs, Luma AI, Moonvalley, Pika, Runway — and more. There’s a similar expansion in Photoshop Beta.

PiXimperfect takes a sober look at Google Nano Banana vs Photoshop: A Fair Comparison, covering Retouching, Compositing, Mockups, Color Grading and Photo Restoration.

Photographer Tyler Stalman covers his video workflow in The AI video tools I actually use. Unfortunately, Final Cut is my least favorite major NLE.

In I Tried Replacing My Human Editor with AI (Here’s What Happened), Luc Forsyth found that Eddie AI is useful, but not cheap or a replacement for people using NLEs.

In This AI Tool Should be ILLEGAL for Video Editors, Herman Huan shows how to use Google Nano Banana as an adjunct to After Effects and your NLE.

Jack Vs. AI posted How to Create Superhero VFX with AI (EASY WORKFLOW). He used ChatGPT for prompt generation, Nano Banana to create AI images, Topaz for image upscaling, and Higgsfield AI’s VFX pre-sets (including Kling, Google Veo 3 and Wan 2.5).

flomotion shared AI Compositing Tutorial in After Effects (Firefly and Runway).

To create a mix that’s clear and balanced, see Audio Hack: Frequency Carving | Lessons in Editing You Probably Missed | @Olufemii x Adobe Video.

Herman Huan presented 5 MUST-KNOW In-Camera Transitions for Eye-Catching Videos and Why Your Video Transitions SUCK (And How to FIX IT), if you need a little enhancement in a rut.

In Faster Than After Effects? Moho Character Animation @YondStudio, Jake In Motion gives you a behind-the-scenes look of a studio that switched apps, what it unlocked for their workflow, and how Moho compares to the character animation tools in After Effects.

If you have 25 minutes, check out This 3D Ripple Logo Effect is Hypnotic! (After Effects Tutorial) from SternFX. Eran also posted How to Make 3D Look Cinematic in After Effects.

Chris Zwar continued his recent series with After Effects Guru Meditation 2: Compositing for faster 3D workflows.

Stephan Zammit adds to the conversations on issues around how to Animate 3D Models in After Effects 2025.

Ben Marriott uses synthetic rain to look at Animating at 3 Levels in After Effects.

Bilawal Sidhu says:
“What used to take hours in After Effects now takes just one text prompt. Tools like Google’s Nano Banana, Seedream 4, Runway’s Aleph, and others are pioneering instruction-based editing, a breakthrough that collapses complex, multi-step VFX workflows into a single, implicit direction.”

The unasked question seems to be, ‘will the bubble burst before the actual cost of AI development, data centers and other subsidized operations becomes apparent.’ Listen to the rest in This New AI Workflow Replaces Hours of VFX with a Single Prompt. A slightly broader vision of the future was presented in The AI & 3D Tools No One Is Talking About (Harvard Lecture).

Andrew Price, better known as @blenderguru, talks about a big question — will AI take over 3D? From Blender’s newest tools to AI in storytelling and the rise of indie creators, Bad Decisions Studio explores what these changes really mean for the creative industry in No BS Conversation about AI & 3D with Andrew Price (Blender Guru) | Bad Decisions Podcast #70.

In I let ChatGPT recreate the Dune: Part Two look | THIS IS INSANE, Waqas Qazi uses ChatGPT to create color grades and a .cube file that can be imported to your NLE.

Curious Refuge says that The Best AI Video Generator is Here… (spoiler: Kling 2.5 Turbo was judged the best AI video generator currently).

Theoretically Media has another take in NEW AI Video Challenges Veo-3’s Throne! Affordable/Free, & GOOD! (Alibaba’s WAN 2.5, as it also generates dialogue audio).

Matt Wolfe does a general roundup of AI news quicktakes in 29 Biggest AI Stories You Missed This Week.

There’s so much surreal news that deserves savage humor, but this will have to do… from The Daily Show: