Have you ever looked in the Adobe After Effects Effects menu and wondered what some effects are used for?
This time: Auto Color, Auto Contrast and Auto Levels

This is a fairly simple technique often done poorly. The trick to making the 3D extrusion look as good as possible is in the way you use a custom shape layer and the way you assign textures to the extrusion.

Cast 3D shadows onto live action footage
Use shadow diffusion and special material options
Tutorials for Visual Effects & Motion Graphics
Free After Effects Tutorials & More Hosted By: Andrew Kramer

Retro 3D look is made from Drop Shadows. It's pretty fun and comes with some expression controls for color and angle of the 3D.

YY_MagicKey is a very powerful keying plugin, minus the complicated settings. It was designed specifically with the keying-out of premultiplied stock elements (explosions, blood, muzzle flares, etc) in mind, and never takes a long time to set up.

This script turns 'Accept lights and shadows' for selected layers on or off.

The "Wobbly Keyframe" problem has been plaguing After Effects animators everywhere. greyscalegorilla made this short cast on how to get rid of the problem.

Learn how to rig a still image using the Puppet Pin tool and animate it using only After Effects...

Eran Stern teaches you how to control the scattering of light in a composition using adjustment light.