Adobe After Effects allows users to create cinematic movie titles, intros, and transitions, remove an object from a clip, start a fire or make it rain, or animate a logo or character. The vendor states that with After Effects, users can apply motion-graphics and animation to any digital object.
$20.99
Per User Per Month
DaVinci Resolve
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Australian company Blackmagic Design offers their video editing application DaVinci Resolve for a wide range of high quality ultra HD effects, render queue, and video uploading options among other features.
$0
Free
Pricing
Adobe After Effects
DaVinci Resolve
Editions & Modules
Annual Plan (Paid Monthly)
$20.99
Per User Per Month
Monthly Plan
$31.49
Per User Per Month
Annual Plan (Prepaid)
$239.88
Per User Per Year
DaVinci Resolve 17
$0.00
Free
DaVinci Resolve Studio 17
$295.00
perpetual license
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Adobe After Effects
DaVinci Resolve
Free Trial
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
—
—
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Adobe After Effects
DaVinci Resolve
TrustRadius Insights
Adobe After Effects
DaVinci Resolve
Highlights
Research Team Insight
Published
Both Adobe After Effects and DaVinci Resolve serve distinct groups of professionals and enthusiasts, reflecting their use cases and functionality. DaVinci Resolve has been highlighted by its users for its exceptional color grading and color correction capabilities, making it a preferred choice among users who need advanced color handling in their video projects. It is especially popular in environments such as communications and digital modeling departments within organizations, where consistent and high-quality video output is crucial, as well as among filmmakers and colorists who require detailed control over their footage.
Adobe After Effects, on the other hand, is primarily celebrated for its robust motion graphics and visual effects tools. This software finds significant usage among graphic designers, motion graphics artists, and marketing departments where creating engaging digital ads and animations is a priority. Users favor After Effects for tasks that demand intricate graphical animations and compositing activities that are essential in post-production workflows where visual enhancement of projects is required. The tool’s integration within the Adobe ecosystem also enables a seamless workflow, making it a staple in environments that manage a high volume of graphics-intensive projects.
The choice between Adobe After Effects and DaVinci Resolve often comes down to the specific needs of the users: DaVinci Resolve for those whose priority is high fidelity color grading and video editing, and Adobe After Effects for users who require advanced graphic animations and effects. This divergence in use cases reflects the specialized nature of each software, catering to different aspects of video and production demands while offering tools that are optimally tailored to enhance the specific creative vision of their users.
Adobe After Effects is well suited for creating short video projects that require intricate animation, like 5 minute or 1-minute countdowns, credit roll-ins, outros, and video bumpers. It is also useful for creating animated elements that can be incorporated into video projects, like animated key titles. For longer videos, I would recommend using Adobe Premiere Pro instead.
DaVinci Resolve is perfect for any video editing needs. It provides a lot of tools to control images, logos, text, transitions, as well as any other imported media that has been dragged to the timeline. It lets you create deliverables of very good quality and control every single detail from setup to final video export. It might not be the best option for a quick, simple video edit if the user does not how to use it because it will take a while to get on board on how to use it, even for simple edits.
After Effects is great for creating motion content once and easily exporting it to various formats such as web, broadcast, GIF, etc.
After Effects is the industry standard for motion graphics. While I’m an Apple user and have used Motion in the past it is not as feature rich and most clients will expect you to use After Effects.
After Effects is great for complex UI animation. Tools like principle and Flinto are great but are quite cumbersome for complex UI animations.
Resolve isn't extremely difficult to learn, at least from a UI perspective. I've found learning the node system isn't a steep learning curve. Users who can visualize how they want a grade or match to look can find their way around the software and use simple tools to get close to their result. People can do this without a lot of experience with the software.
Resolve provides extremely complex color grading opportunities, depending on how deeply you wish to use the software. One can fine tune an image, or use a plethora of masks, camera tracking, effects, and small tweaks to get images precisely where they want. It's a versatile software with so many options for every color grading scenario.
Resolve is free to use. I'm not too familiar with the NLE function of the program, but as a free software, one can accomplish a lot of work without needing to pay. Noise reduction can be a critical element of Resolve, so in that case, you'll need to purchase the full version to utilize the software to its fullest.
Resolve is popular enough that the internet provides many resources, forums, and tutorial videos to better learn the software. This is a big deal for helping to navigate Resolve's capabilities.
I will renew my use of After Effects since it's affordable and always has been reliable. They also always continue to update new features and add new things to compete with other software out there. I also like all the 3rd party plugins out there that keep my interest for the future and new toolsets and creative solutions.
There's a lot of features and functionality that Adobe After Effects offers that can be hard to navigate at times. Depending on the depth you plan to use the software for, that can take some time to learn. The built-in templates and tutorials really help soften that learning curve. Once you get past some of the basics, it's fairly simple to use.
Da Vinci Resolve is up there amongst the big, professional video editing packages like Apple's FinalCutPro and Adobe Premier Pro. To just be included in this league, the package needs to have a plethora of features that the common man does not need. In essence, this overwhelming amount of features makes the product tricky to learn, but once you have the hang of it, it is a dream.
Adobe customer support is wonderful. They genuinely care about their product and the end user experience. The products they create have always been innovative and continue to improve. They have a huge chunk of the user market in their field and still strive to improve. This is such a big deal for me and other small business/organizations that need their products and don't have a large voice on our own.
Not only do they have classes available in Los Angeles, but they'll also allow you to work from home with the manual and demo materials, and then let you test out to get a certification. They get back to you quickly when you email, and they've got a "family" approach to customer service, they make you feel like you're important to them.
I've created videos with Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe PhotoShop (with the GIF function), as well as Canva and other online products. Adobe Premiere Pro does not have the same capabilities for creating vector-based content, meaning if that is necessary, Adobe After Effects is superior. The video format functionality of Adobe PhotoShop is more basic and works similarly to Adobe After Effects, so I would choose to use Adobe After Effects over Photoshop for video-making needs because of the increased capability.
I learned so much from this instructional exercise, and I appreciated how the educator is an expert all-day colorist. The section on sound reduction was particularly instructive. I noticed a few inconsistencies between certain methodologies in this instructional exercise and approaches suggested in the Advanced Color Grading in Resolve 15 instructional exercise (e.g., where to place sound reduction in the hub tree), but this is to be expected given that there is no one right way to do any of this. I also learned a lot about Resolve's "Restoration" modules for working with authentic film. This instructional exercise will come up again and again in my work.
Davinci Resolve allows us to make quick edits and improve the sound on our company webinars and demo videos. This adds a lot of polish, and since we can do it in-house, it's cheaper and allows us to post and share those videos quickly.
We've used the software for some flashier marketing videos, and that does drive some positive attention and business our way. Most of that higher-level work is handled by outside agencies, but the fact that we can do some of it in-house saved us money.
