When I’m frustrated with what I’m working on, I play with my camera. This morning it’s After Effects that is sending me back into the warm embrace of my Sony a7ii. I’m just going to come out and say it: After Effects’ user experience blows.

I don’t use lens hoods. They just sit on my desk.

First beagle photo of the day. There will be more

So I’m new to After Effects and attempting to learn it, but I’m also a UI designer and while I like a good dark UI, my issue with After Effects’ UI is that it’s TINY. Like ridiculous tiny. There are so many little toolbars with icons shoved together and then large sweeping fields of space where there’s absolutely nothing. This is the worst use of screen space I’ve seen in quite a while. Now I know that they have to shove a lot of crap into this thing to make it work for video guys, but come on. Where’s the UI scale preference? Where’s the intelligence to say “Hey look, this guy has a big-ass 5k monitor, maybe lets spread out, why not”? Come on Adobe, this isn’t your first time.

All I’m saying is how can there be this much junk on the screen and I still can’t figure out how to set a keyframe? End of song.