The Happenin’ Hotspot for After Effects Artists

With Adobe CS6 out in just a few days, this tool will remove older versions of Adobe software from your system. Sure you could just trash everything but software these days leaves little bits and pieces of code all over your system. This tool will remove all the pieces from your system.

Why do you want to remove CS5.5 and earlier?

1. To avoid system & software conflicts
2. To free up space

Yes, there are reasons you may not want to uninstall older versions of After Effects, for example, your clients have not upgraded. You can of course try running both on your system, but this script is here in case of problems.

Note: The first item under “Before you start”: Back up all files stored in Adobe product directories, including custom plug-ins or profiles you have installed.

Here are a couple of tutorials for moving your CS5 plug-ins to CS5.5. The same method applies to CS6. I’m suggesting that you back up your plugins and the video explains the locations where your plug-ins might be:

1. Plug-ins Folder
2. Media Core Folder

Also, back up presets!

Because many plug-ins will not be ready by May 7 with installers for Adobe CS6, it does not mean they will not work. Follow the same procedure in the video for moving your plug-ins to CS6. Not everything will work, but you will be surprised at how many will function just fine. This will save you a lot of time re-installing as well. The videos are about making aliases but we are suggesting that you move them, since you’d be deleting older instances of After Effects anyway.

Transfering your After Effects CS5 plug-ins to After Effects CS5.5

How to Transfer CS5 Plug-ins to CS5.5 in Windows

Note: If you do not remove older versions of After Effects from your system and have multiple instances of the plug-ins on your system, you will likely get some errors. It will probably work fine but you’ll find yourself clicking through an endless series of popup windows telling you you have duplicates.