from everything I've been studying and watching. I've been reading the Meyer's books and so on and getting tips from students in colleges.
But I'm going to be using it mainly for color grading.
In the future I know I'll be able to do more with After Effects, but for now, Is getting After Effects with the intent just to color correct ok? Or would you consider it overkill, and there is an easier or better way?
Thanks
P.S. I think this post is just to have you guys tell me to get AE :D
If all you want to do is color grading, then it may be a bit overkill. *Still, Synthetic Aperature's Color Finesse (the only real tool that would even make me consider using AE to color correct) is a very good program with a lot of control over the image.
The thing to keep in mind is that AE is far from the realtime (or at least near realtime) performance you get from most good NLEs these days. *Tools like Sony's Vegas have the capability to do pretty much all the color correction to an image that you'd want (and then some:)), plus you get the benefit of being able to play through your footage without having to render and see what it looks like with the adjustments you made. *If you wanted to see the results of your adjustments in motion in AE, you'd have to render (at least a RAM preview) first.
While I can't really say that AE can do a whole lot more in terms of color correction compared to most NLEs these days, there is a lot that it excels at that most NLEs can't even begin to touch. *IMHO, the power of AE comes in it's refined animation controls (along with the ability to script almost anything in the program). *While I'm sure if I spent the time to become proficient in an NLE's workflow for animating things, I might use AE for less work. *But whenever it came to a really complex project, AE would be my choice rather than an NLE.
Besides that, you have access to a lot of plugins (both commercial and free) as well to an ever-improving titling tool :) *So if you ever see that any of these other uses of AE might be of use to you, then I would wholly recommened get AE asap and learning as much as you can about it :)
Great response and feedback! Thanks a lot!