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Spy Photo: New FREE Presets For After Effects

By Aharon Rabinowitz
November 21, 2010
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Introducing Spy Photo, a new set of FREE presets for Adobe After Effects that makes it easy to create the look of snapshots taken by a spy or private investigator, as seen in film and TV. The presets are dynamic, and require no keyframes. Just marks where you want the effect to happen. After Effects will do the rest.

  • Works with After Effects CS3 and later.
  • No 3rd-Party plug-ins are required.
  • NEW: Universal – Will work in any language version of AE.
  • NEW: Works in AE CS5.5!

Get the Presets HERE.

The presets were created by Dan Ebberts and Aharon Rabinowitz. Here is a video explaining how to use them:

UPDATE: I just updated the expressions in these presets to work in all language versions of AE. If you downloaded before November 24th, you might want to re-download and use the updated versions.

UPDATE:We just added a new Feature called Hold and Resume. Here’s a video that explains it:

27 Responses

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  1. Martin said

    thank you for this great presets I sure will have some use for them..
    tank you!

  2. Mandar said

    Thank u Aharon, its really very amazing, I will use this u for my other projects also thank you again for sharing this amazing preset…….
    thanks to Motionscript Guru Dan also….

  3. Thomas said

    Thank you Aharon and Dan SO MUCH for all your contributions making this community a great place to live.

    Because i’m not very familiar with advanced expressions, there’s one question that i have regarding the first used Spy Photo Preset in the Tut.
    Am i able to change the value from where the playback continues from where the flash/freeze has been set, rather than having the “jump cut” in time (after x-frames of freeze duration)?

    Hopefully you know what i mean by that.

    thanks a million.
    Thomas

  4. Really impressive expressions!! You really didn’t leave anything to chance!!

  5. Expressions are all Dan. I just tell him how stuff should behave and connect, and he makes it happen. He’s a very creative problem solver.

  6. Thomas said

    Hi Aharon,
    sorry for bothering you. As i see no reply to my question (see above), have i missed something in the tutorial video ralate to my question?

    Thank you.

  7. Hi Thomas – we implemented the feature you requested. Watch the second video (above) and download the latest version. You can now do either a freeze and resume (like you want) or freeze and jump cut..

  8. Blaine said

    Every good spy movie needs a “Mission Impossible”-esque sound track. I noticed your tutorial had a little of this at the beginning and end. Wondering where you got it from?

  9. Matthew Sorrels said

    This is very cool, thanks so much for giving it away.

    I couldn’t resist tweaking it a bit though, I added a color hold check box so that the black&white effect would only last for the flash duration but not during the rest of the hold. Gives it a bit more modern style photo effect. Was very easy to do since you setup all the hard work already. Thanks again.

  10. Blaine – it’s from SmartSound’s Library called Cinema Standards. The song is called Covert Operations.

  11. Cool. Post an example, if you can.

  12. Thanks for all that you give and share of your talents, I appreciate you so much!

  13. kleezyclay said

    Thank you so much for this—-I cant wait to start using this

  14. Thomas said

    Hey Aharon,
    Wow! I’m knocked off my socks!!!
    Thank you so much for implementing my request.

    Great to have you on planet earth :)

  15. Joseph Rakereng said

    Been looking for this preset for long,i’m new to your tutorials man i spend most of my time in videocopilot and am really forward to your tutorials.
    from Botswana.Southern Africa.God bless

  16. peky said

    Brilliant, very helpful, thank you

  17. ron chan said

    Fantastic!! Nice job. Thank you.

  18. Jerry G said

    Hi Aharon, I’m having a strange problem… I get only 1 frame of solid white and 20 frames of freeze duration at the marker with no desaturation. Then, 2 seconds later, the flash comes on and the video is black and white. I am just using the default settings… Any ideas? Thanks for all you do…

  19. Wow! This is extremely useful — and fun! I can think of a gazillion reasons to use it.

    Thanks a TON, Aharon — and Dan!!!

  20. Thanks for these expressions, found this just at the right time (although I know this posts’sbeen up for much longer)

  21. Riks said

    Great plugin, dont work in cs5.5 :(

  22. FODAY CONTEH said

    Thanks, great presets

  23. MIHAI said

    Thank you verry much!

  24. hastings abel said

    they are quite fantastic
    but they say they are not supported when downloaded.

Continuing the Discussion

  1. Tweets that mention Spy Photo: New FREE Presets For After Effects – All Bets Are Off Productions -- Topsy.com linked to this post on November 23, 2010

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Aharon Rabinowitz, TJ Baurain, David Hodge, mike brennan, John Percival and others. John Percival said: RT @ABAOProductions: Spy Photo – New FREE Preset Effects for ADobe After Effects – now available! http://bit.ly/ga9C6T [...]

  2. QR Code Dunny, They are Among Us linked to this post on February 12, 2011

    [...] used the spy photo preset from all bets are off production for the time remapping. originally I was doing by hand(mouse using [...]

  3. an After Effects Portal: Spy Photo: free presets for After Effects linked to this post on April 9, 2011

    [...] Photo: free presets for After Effects Spy Photo is a set of free presets for After Effects to help create the look of snapshots taken by a spy or [...]

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