For those who might have missed the news, Adobe Creative Suite 4 started shipping this past Wednesday. Users are already receiving their pre-orders.

After Effects users looking to upgrade need to be mindful of two issues:

• As reported earlier, AE CS4 will not run on pre-Intel Macs.
• Not all CS3-compatible plug-ins are compatible with AE CS4; some will need upgrades. So far, most of these upgrades seem to be free or available for a nominal charge.

Fortunately, there’s information out there to help you through this upgrade decision and process:

• Toolfarm has posted a list of which plug-ins are compatible, as well as other information about the different CS4 upgrade options.
• We wrote a blog post about migrating After Effects between different computers, should you decide to upgrade your hardware at the same time as your software.
• If you’re still undecided about whether or not to upgrade, we wrote a summary of new features in AE CS4 that may be of interest to motion graphics artists. Todd Kopriva of Adobe has gone one step farther and accumulated a list of all of the new features in AE CS4.

After using AE CS4 for awhile now, I have to admit this release has grown on me. It does not have the flashy headliners for motion graphics artists that CS3 had (which introduced Shape layers, the Puppet tools, Brainstorm, Color Management, and numerous other features), but it certainly has a number of nice refinements which make the program more pleasant and more efficient to use on a daily basis. As outlined in this article on CS4 over at Focal Press, we’re currently updating our book After Effects Apprentice for CS4, and will be releasing a free chapter for Creating Motion Graphics 4th Edition discussing the differences between CS3 and CS4.

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