Profound Effects, Inc. has announced the immediate availability of Useful Assistants (UA), a new automation tool for Adobe After Effects 5.5 and 6.0.  UA is designed to streamline workflow within After Effects by automating various tasks and adding convenience features that are absent in After Effects itself. With more than 35 assistants included and more available online at no additional charge, UA makes many tasks as simple as a mouse click.  For example, UA includes assistants that do the following:?
- Make a Web page contact sheet of frames from throughout a composition, automatically.?- Automatically detect cuts in footage and place markers at these locations.?- Save your work to an incrementing file name automatically (After Effects 6.0 and later).?- Copy and paste whole groups of expressions at a time.?? Clicking an assistant will tell users if the assistant is ready to run and if not, tells you why. For example, if an assistant requires a layer to be selected, it will tell you if one isn't. Double-clicking an assistant executes it. Useful Assistants also has a built-in ability to make preset assistants and sequences of assistants. Online demonstrations of some of the assistants included in UA can be found at .??UA's streamlining of workflow extends to masks and 3D capabilities.  For example, a trip to Adobe Illustrator is saved with the Create Rounded Mask assistant. The Copy Mask assistant lets you pick from many mask properties and copy these to one or more other masks. The Arrange In Z assistant assigns depth to multiple layers instantly.??Leveraging Profound's uPlug Technology originally presented in Useful Things,  Profound will continue to add new UA assistants. New assistants are made available, usually at no charge, on the Profound eXchange, an online repository of free assistants, effects, and software updates. 

Useful Assistants carries a list price of $295 and is available for both Windows and Mac OS X systems compatible running After Effects 5.5 or 6.0. 

(http://www.profoundeffects.com)