GETTING STARTED

Adobe After Effects provides a comprehensive set of 2D and 3D tools for compositing, animation, and effects
that motion-graphics professionals, visual effects artists, web designers, and film and video professionals need.
After Effects is widely used for digital post-production of film, video, DVD, and the web. You can composite
layers in various ways, apply and combine sophisticated visual and audio effects, and animate both objects and
effects.

 INSTALLING AFTER EFFECTS

You must purchase the Adobe After Effects CS4 software separately. You must also have Apple QuickTime7.1.5
or later installed on your system.

 OPTIMIZING PERFORMANCE

Creating movies is memory-intensive work for a desktop computer. After Effects CS4 requires a minimum of 2GB
of RAM. The more RAM that is available to After Effects, the faster the application will work for you.

 ADOBE CERTIFICATION

The Adobe Certified program is designed to help Adobe customers and trainers improve and promote their
product-proficiency skills. There are three levels of certification.

-Adobe Certified Expert (ACE)

-Adobe Certified Instructor (ACI)

-Adobe Authorized Training Center (AATC)

The Adobe Certified program is designed to help Adobe customers and trainers improve and promote their
product-proficiency skills.
GETTING TO KNOW THE WORKFLOW

Lesson overview
In this lesson you’ll learn how to do the following:
- Create a project and import footage
- Create compositions and arrange layers
- Navigate the Adobe After Effects interface
- Use the Project, Composition, and Timeline panels
- Apply basic keyframes and effects
- Preview your work using standard and RAM previews

A basic After Effects workflow follows six steps: importing and organizing footage, creating compositions,
and arranging layers, adding effects, animating elements, previewing your work, and rendering and
outputting the final composition so that it can be viewed by others.
Creating a project and importing footage
When you begin it’s a good idea to restore the default preferences for After Effects. You can do this with a simple
keyboard shortcut.

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift (Windows) or Option+Command+Shift (Mac OS) while starting After Effects to restore default
preferences settings. When prompted, click OK to delete your preferences file.

2. Click Close to close the Welcome window.

After Effects opens to display an empty, untitled project.

About the After Effects workspace

After Effects offers a flexible, customizable workspace. The main window of the program is called the application
window. Panels are organized in this window in an arrangement called workspace. The default workspace contains
groups of panels as well as panels that stand alone.

Application Window Tools Panel Composition Panel

Timeline Panel Time graph

Project Panel Preview Panel

Effects and Presets Panel

You can customize a workspace by dragging the panels into the configuration that best suits your working style.

When you begin a project, often the first thing you’ll do is add footage to it.
3. Choose File > Import > File or double-click in the lower area of the Project panel to open the Import File dialog box.

After you’ve imported footage, it’s a good time to save the project.

4. Choose File > Save.

Creating a composition and arranging layers

The next step of the workflow is to create a composition. You can create all animation, layering, and effects in a
composition.

Compositions- include one or more layers, arranged in the Composition panel and in the Timeline panel.
Layers- are the components you use to build a composition. Without layers, a composition consists only of an empty
frame.

To create a composition, you will drag the footage items into the Timeline panel, and After Effects will create layers for
them.

1. In the Project panel, Ctrl-click (Windows) or Command-click (Mac OS) to select the composition and footage
items.

2. Drag the selected footage items into the Timeline panel. The new composition from selection dialog box
appears.

3. Click OK to create the new composition. The footage items appear as layers in the Timeline panel, and After
Effects displays the composition in the Composition panel.

4. Click an empty area of the Timeline panel to deselect the layers, and then drag the sub composition to the
bottom of the layer stack.

5. Click the Source Name column title in the Timeline panel to change it to Layer Name.

6. Choose File > Save to save your project so far.

About the Tools Panel

A B C D E F G H I J K L M

A- Selection Tool
The default tool, used to select clips in the timeline.
B- Hand
Drag the timeline view left and right.
C- Zoom
To magnify the view, or drag and select a rectangular area to zoom into.
D- Rotation
To rotate a layer.
E- Camera tools
 To adjust a working 3D camera.
F- Pan Behind
To modify the anchor point in the Layer panel with the arrow tool changes the anchor value without changing
the position value.
G- Mask and Shape tools
It is a path or outline that is used to modify layer effects and properties.
H- Pen tools
It places the anchor points which define a path that, eventually, becomes an object.
I- Type tools
Adds text or paragraph format to your composition.
J- Brush
Applies brush marks that modify the color or transparency of an area of a layer without modifying the layer
source.
K- Clone
To paint copies of objects on video or remove them.
L- Eraser
Clears the current layer content.
M- Puppet tools
This function allows users to bring in a photograph or other 2D images of a figure into a composition and define
areas for manipulation. You can then animate the figure, almost like a 3D model, creating an entire animated
short if you wish.

About the Timeline Panel

Composition Name Current Time Time Graph

Audio/Video Source Name/ Layer Switches

Switches Column Layer Name Column
About the Time graph

Work area start and end brackets

Time Navigator start and end bracket Time ruler

Composition button

Using keyframe

Keyframe- used to change the properties of video or audio effect overtime.

Previewing your work

Standard preview
Standard preview (commonly called a spacebar preview) plays the composition from the current-time-indicator
to the end of the composition.

RAM preview
RAM preview allocates enough RAM to play the preview (with audio) as fast as the system allows, up to the
frame rate of the composition. Use RAM preview to play footage in the Timeline, Layer, or Footage panel.
CREATING A BASIC ANIMATION USING EFFECTS AND PRESETS

Lesson overview
In this lesson you’ll learn how to do the following:
- Use Adobe Bridge to preview and import footage items
- Applying and controlling effects
- Applying an animation preset
- Rendering the composition

In this lesson, you will continue to learn the basics of the Adobe After Effects project workflow.
Importing footage using Adobe Bridge

You can use Adobe Bridge to organize, browse, and locate the assets you need to create content for print, the web,
television, DVD, film, and mobile devices.

1. Choose file > Browse In Bridge. If you receive a message about adding an extension to Adobe Bridge, click OK.

Adobe Bridge opens, displaying a collection of panels, menus, and buttons.

2. Click the folders tab in the upper-left corner of Adobe Bridge.

3. In the Folders panel, navigate your folder. Click the arrows to open the nested folders. You can also double-click folder
thumbnails icons in the Content panel.

4. Drag the thumbnail slider at the bottom of the Adobe Bridge window to enlarge the thumbnail previews.

5. Select your file in the Content panel, and notice that it appears in the Preview panel, as well. Information about the
file, including its creation date, bit, depth, and file size, appears in Metadata panel.

6. Double click your thumbnail file in the Content panel to place the file in your After Effects project. Alternatively, you
can drag the thumbnail into the Project panel in After Effects.

Applying and controlling effects

You can apply or remove an effect at any time. You can apply and edit effects on adjustment layers just as you do with
other layers. However, when you apply an effect to an adjustment layer, the effect is applied to all layers below in the
Timeline panel.

Effects can also be saved, browsed, and applied as animation presets.

Applying an animation preset

It allows you to add preset visual effects to your composition. It is also a way to enhance your composition.

Rendering the composition

You’re ready to prepare your composition for output. When you create output, the layers of a composition and each
layer’s masks, effects, and properties are rendered frame by frame into one or more output files or, in the case of a
sequence, into a series of consecutive files. Making a movie from your final composition can take a few minutes or many
hours, depending on the composition’s frame size, quality, complexity, and compression method. When you place your
composition in the render queue, it becomes a render item that uses the render settings assigned to it. While After
Effects renders the item, you are unable to work in the program. After Effects provides a variety of formats and
compression types for rendering output; the format you choose depends on the medium from which you’ll play your
final output or on the requirements of your hardware, such as a video-editing system. You will prepare this animation
for two formats so that it can be used for broadcast purposes as well as on a website.
BASIC WORKFLOW TUTORIAL

Lesson overview
In this lesson you’ll learn how to do the following:
- How to create your own synthetic visual elements
Create a simple movie

1. Create a new composition:

 Choose Composition > New Composition.
or press Ctrl+N

2. Change the value of each properties in the Composition Settings dialog box:

then click OK..

3. Create a new text layer:

 Choose Layer > New > Text.
or press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+T
4. Type your name. Then go back to Selection Tool to exit text-editing mode.
5. Set an initial keyframe for the Position property:
 Click the text layer in Timeline panel then click P to show Position properties then click the
Stopwatch to activate the animation mode to the left of the Position property name.
or press Alt+Shift+P

6. Activate the Selection tool:

 Click the Selection Tool button in the Tools panel.
or press V.

7. Using the Selection tool, drag your text to the left of the Composition like this:
8. Move the current-time indicator frame 10 of the composition:
 Drag the text layer in the Center of the Composition Panel

A new keyframe is created at this time for the Position property. Motion is interpolated between keyframe
values.

9. Preview your animation using RAM preview:

 Click the RAM preview button in the Preview panel.
or press 0 in your numpad.

10. Apply the Glow effect:

 Select the text layer
 Choose Effect > Stylize > Glow.
11. Add your composition to the render queue:
 Choose Composition > Add To Render Queue.
or press Ctrl+Shift+/
or
Choose Composition > Make movie.

12. In the Render Queue panel, click the underlined text to the right of Output To. In the Output Movie To dialog
box, choose a name and location for the output movie file, and then click Save. For the location, choose
something easy to find, like your desktop.

13. Click the Render button to process all items in the render queue. The Render Queue panel shows the
progress of the rendering operation. A sound is generated when rendering is complete.