After Effects Upgrade

[dalelpaq]

I would appreciate some technical help. I plan to upgrade my AE CS5 to CS5.5. At present, I have a number of scripts and plug-ins, some bought, some free that I don't want to lose. Is it simply a matter of dragging them out of their folders in C>Programs>Adobe>After Effects (I'm on Win 7 64-bit) and then dragging them back into AE CS5.5? In other words, what do I do to retain the extras I already have? Thanks.

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

As AE 5.5 willbe installed into a new directory you should be able to copy and paste as you have described; everything should work OK. In the unlikely event that it doesn't you will at least be able to revert back to v5. Just a suggestion, download the trial version of AE 5.5 (if one is available) and see how it works in practice.

The only question I would then have, if you do find that you have to revert back to v5, is 'Will an AE 5.5 project open sucessfully in AE v5?'

I looked at upgrading from v5 to v5.5 but decided that, as it appeared to be a 'half version' upgrade at the price of a 'full version' upgrade I'd wait till v6.

[dalelpaq]

I made an interesting discovery. I decided to upgrade AE anyway. It turns out this is another Adobe "gotcha." Originally, I went to production premium CS5 because is was less costly than separately upgrading Ps and AE, the only two programs in CS5 I actually use. Well, you can't upgrade just AE. It's the whole suite or nothing! Had I purchased just AE and Ps, the initial expense would have been a little more, but the upgrades would have been a lot less. I for one love Adobe's software but feel their business model is about as anti-small guy as it can be.

[Bob]

That's correct, the suite is considered a single product with a single product key and license. You can't separate out the individual components for upgrade. And, remember, with the suite you get Photoshop Extended Edition which is much more expensive. The upgrade price for the suite is roughly comparable to upgrading just PS Extended and After Effects together. So, assuming you would upgrade both products, you really aren't losing out.

Adobe is supposed to be looking into a downgrade from the suite to a single component product. But, I haven't heard anything concrete so far. I think that would mostly appeal to someone who bought the suite and found out they only used a single product.

[momoffduty]

The Adobe survey I took last week had questions about the monthly payment user plan. You could start or stop and restart month by month. Think it was $80/month and not sure if that was the suite or by product. Seems like a lot of cons and not sure what the pros would be for this situation.