Adobe releases After Effects 26.3
After Effects 26.3 makes a number of changes to rendering workflows, including the option to copy the currently rendered frame to the clipboard from any of the native render engines.
Adobe has released After Effects 26.3, the latest version of the compositing software for motion graphics, post-production and VFX work.
The update adds support for depth of field in the Advanced 3D renderer, a new 2D Curl Noise effect, and makes the Mask Tracker “up to 5x faster”.
New 3D rendering features
In After Effects’ 3D toolset, the Advanced 3D renderer now supports depth of field.
Depth of field was one of the key missing features when the final-quality GPU render engine was added to After Effects in 2023, along with the still-unsupported motion blur.
The implementation of DoF in After Effects 26.3 provides standard controls like Near and Far Blur levels, plus the option to link focus distance to a Layer in a composition.
It is also now possible to copy the currently rendered frame to the system clipboard, so it can be pasted into other apps – for example, to send a test render to collaborators or clients.
The rendered frame is captured as a 16-bit PNG on macOS, and as both a PNG and BMP on Windows.
The workflow is also supported in the older Classic 3D and Draft 3D renderers.
New 2D Curl Noise effect mimics fluid flow patterns
The other major change is the addition of Curl Noise to the noise and grain effects.
It generates animatable 2D noise with a fluid, organic quality that can resemble smoke, fire or flowing water: the implementation in After Effects comes with a good range of settings to control the flow pattern and how it evolves over time.
Adobe says that it Flow Noise is suited to backgrounds, texture overlays, and “anywhere you want movement that flows rather than flickers”.
Other workflow and performance improvements
Support for vector graphics in SVG format, introduced in After Effects 26.0, gets another update, adding the option to paste SVG content from the clipboard from software like Illustrator.
Other workflow improvements include the option to filter the font list to show only variable fonts.
There are also performance improvements in the motion tracking toolset, with the Mask Tracker now “up to 5x faster”.
Price and system requirements
After Effects 26.3 is available for Windows 11 and macOS 14.0+ on a rental-only basis. Single-app After Effects subscriptions cost $34.49/month or $263.88/year.
In the online documentation, the update is also referred to as the June 2026 release.
Read a full list of new features in After Effects 26.3 in the online release notes
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