If you've applied one of the Prolost After Effects presets and it appears to apply correctly, but has no effect on the layer, you may have applied the "missing" placeholder instead.

When there's a preset already applied in your project that uses the special empty "pseudo effect" that the Prolost Presets rely on, After Effects unhelpfully lists this effect under "Missing" in the Effects and Presets panel.

Unfortunately, it's easy to grab this version by mistake. When you apply it, you get just the empty shell of the preset, with no guts. The guts, of course, are important.

So make sure to grab the preset from the User Presets folder, not the Missing folder.