Adobe's well-known video-effects powerhouse is now even better. Adobe After Effects 6.0 Professional ($999 direct) adds impressive text and vector paint tools, redesigned and simplified motion tracking, and improved integration with Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere Pro—not to mention enhanced performance and accessibility.

After Effects is, like most video-editing software, a complex program of windows and dialogs, which can be intimidating to the uninitiated. Version 6.0, however, streamlines processes and takes on even greater similarity to Photoshop and Illustrator. This doesn't make it an easy program to master—only easier to understand.

After Effects can now create, edit, and animate text directly in the Composition (Comp) Window and Timeline, using versatile typographical tools familiar to Illustrator and Photoshop users. Instead of the cumbersome process of splitting animated text across various layers, each text layer can support several combinations of text and effects. Text Animators and Selectors easily adjust various properties and behaviors, such as position, tracking, rotation, skew, hue, opacity, and so on. It takes only a few steps to create some spectacular text effects.

The new Photoshop-like, pressure-sensitive vector paint brushes and clone tool are used in the Layer window, not the Comp window, and editing of existing strokes must be done in the Timeline window. While all this seems overly complicated, it gives precise control over the animation of brushstroke properties and behaviors. The only way to change a stroke's shape is to use a mask or the eraser, though you can edit size, position, and rotation directly.

Masking is robust, with the automatic creation of masks from alpha channel information, better keylighting of semitransparent objects and hair, and Roto-Bezier masks.

Motion tracking offers significantly greater flexibility, accuracy, and performance, using intuitive controls that help you analyze and edit your results. You can track multiple points on a layer, then easily copy and paste the tracking data for reuse on another layer.

Files imported from Photoshop or Illustrator convert layers as sequences while retaining text as fully editable. Premiere Pro's nested and multiple sequences are maintained as nested compositions, transparency and cross-dissolve as opacity keyframes, and motion effects as transform keyframes.

After Effects 6.0 is a must for anyone serious about video effects.