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.

Compositing fog elements seems like a pretty straightforward thing to do in After Effects. Shoot or render your fog element against black, and then Add or Screen it on top of your footage, right? Wrong. This method is incorrect. Let's go over why.

Using this, you can get an Adjustment Layer with CenionConverter Effect applied to it [OR] It applies the effect to selected layers...

It shouldn't matter what rotation methods and parenting the original camera has, as it translates all of that into a free camera with only position, rotation, and zoom parameters.

Paint splat using Particular and CC Glass. [A resurrected project from trapcode-people.net]

Learn how to build this "Canyon Dusk" scene by using silhouette layer elements and effects...

A very useful expression to automatically fade in and out based on the layers length.

Ever wanted to fly around a "CC Sphered" Layer? Linking CC Sphere to a Light and Camera is the way to do it.

A quick tip on creating "super tight" garbage mattes to aid keying.