Manuale d’uso / di manutenzione del prodotto After Effects CS4 del fabbricante Adobe
Vai alla pagina of 582
.
.
iii La s t updated 12/21/2009 Contents Chapter 1: Getting started Installation, activation, and registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
iv USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Contents La s t updated 12/21/2009 3D layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
v USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Contents La s t updated 12/21/2009 Distort effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
vi USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Contents La s t updated 12/21/2009 Compositions and the work area (keyboard shortcuts) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 742 Time navigation (keyboard shortcuts) .
1 La s t updated 12/21/2009 Chapter 1: Getting started For an introduction to the basic terminology, concepts, and workflows in After Effects, see “ General workflow in After Effects ” on page 30.
2 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Getting started La s t updated 12/21/2009 Register the software 1 If the registration dialog box isn’t already open, choose Help > Registration.
3 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Getting started La s t updated 12/21/2009 The sites searched by the default Community Help search engine are hand-selected and reviewed for quality by Adobe and Adobe Community Experts.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
22 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 User interface La s t updated 12/21/2009 Auto-Save preferences • Automatically Save Projects and Maximum Project Versions: “ Save and back up projects ” on page 50 Mem.
23 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 User interface La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Added Transform > Flip Horizontal, Transform > Flip Vertical, Transform > Center In View, Open Footage, Open Composition, Convert To Live Photoshop 3D, and Convert To Editable Text to context menu for a layer.
24 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 User interface La s t updated 12/21/2009 Project panel • Added text field for searching and filtering. Removed Find button from bottom of panel. See “ Search and filter in the Timeline, Project, and Effects & Presets panels ” on page 17.
25 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 User interface La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Added name to Property submenu in Expression Language menu. See “ Property attributes and methods (expression reference) ” on page 677. • Added Separate Dimensions button in Graph Editor.
26 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 User interface La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Added Transform > Center In View. See “ Move layers in space ” on page 145. • Added Arrange submenu and moved Bring Layer To Front, Bring Layer Forward, Send Layer To Back, and Send Layer Backward into it.
27 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 User interface La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Added Import Premiere Pro Sequence dialog box. See “ Working with Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects ” on page 42. • Added Save Copy As XML dialog box. See “ About projects ” on page 49.
28 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 User interface La s t updated 12/21/2009 Preferences dialog box See “ Preferences ” on page 20. • Previews: • Added Enable Adaptive Resolution With OpenGL. • Replaced Accelerate Effects Using menu with Accelerate Effects Using OpenGL (When Possible).
29 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 User interface La s t updated 12/21/2009 Keyboard shortcuts and mouse actions New keyboard shortcuts • Place the insertion point in the search field for the active panel: Ctrl+F (Windows) or Command+F (Mac OS). See “ Search and filter in the Timeline, Project, and Effects & Presets panels ” on page 17.
30 La s t updated 12/21/2009 Chapter 3: Workflows, planning, and setup Workflows General workflow in After Effects More Help topics “ Basic workflow tutorial: Create a simple movie ” on page 31 Online resources for general workflow in After Effects For a video introduction to After Effects, go to the Adobe website at www.
31 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 Modify and animate layer properties You can modify any property of a layer, such as size, position, and opacity. You can make any combination of layer properties change over time, using keyframes and expressions.
32 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 5 Set an initial keyframe for the Position property: • Click the triangle to the left of the layer name in the Tim.
33 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 Specific workflows in After Effects Most sections of this document are organized according to general tasks that you can perform with After Effects. However, many questions are more focused on a specific end result rather than a specific task.
34 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 Acquiring, choosing, and preparing footage Before importing footage, first decide which media and formats you'll use for your finished movies, and then determine the best settings for your source material.
35 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 Composition settings After you prepare and import footage items, you use these footage items to create layers in a composition, where you animate and apply effects.
36 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 Use these tips when shooting video for mobile devices: • Tight shots are better.
37 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 It’s best to store footage in the same folder as the project file or in another folder within that folder. Here’s a sample hierarchy: /newproject/project_file.aep /newproject/source/footage1.
38 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 • To reveal a file in Adobe Bridge, select a file in the Project panel and choose File > Reveal In Bridge. • To use Adobe Bridge to open template projects, choose File > Browse Template Projects.
39 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 To see a video tutorial on rotoscoping with After Effects and Photoshop, visit the Adobe website at www.adobe.com/go/lrvid4107_xp . The animation and video features in Photoshop Extended include simple keyframe-based animation.
40 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 Color After Effects works internally with colors in an RGB (red, green, blue) color space. Though After Effects can convert CMYK images to RGB, you should do video work in Photoshop in RGB.
41 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 Exporting QuickTime video from Flash If you create animations or applications with Flash, you can export them as QuickTime movies using the File > Export > Export Movie command in Flash.
42 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Exporting XFL Format from After Effects to Flash (Tom Green, Layers Magazine) Importing Flash SWF files into Aft.
43 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 • www.adobe.com/go/vid0256 • www.adobe.com/go/lrvid4108_xp Working with Adobe Encore and After Effects You can use After Effects to quickly create buttons and button layers for use in Adobe Encore®.
44 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 Edit audio in Adobe Soundbooth or Adobe Audition While working in After Effects, you may want to use the more comprehensive audio-editing capabilities of Adobe Soundbooth™ or Adobe Audition® to fine-tune your audio.
45 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 Changes you make in After Effects to a dynamically linked composition appear immediately in the linked clips in Adobe Premiere Pro, Encore, or Soundbooth.
46 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 Create and link to After Effects compositions with Dynamic Link (Production Premium or Master Collection only) Creat.
47 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 Dynamically linked After Effects compositions Modify a dynamically linked composition in After Effects (Production Premium or Master Collection only) Use the Edit Original command in Adobe Premiere Pro or Encore to modify a linked After Effects composition.
48 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 Do one of the following: • In After Effects, choose File > Adobe Dynamic Link > Import Premiere Pro Sequence. Choose a Premiere Pro project, and then choose one or more sequences.
49 La s t updated 12/21/2009 Chapter 4: Projects and compositions Projects About projects An After Effects project is a single file that stores compositions and references to all of the source files used by footage items in that project. Compositions are collections of layers.
50 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 Project links embedded in QuickTime, Video for Windows, FLV, and F4V files When you render a movie and export it to a container format, you can embed a link to the After Effects project in the container file.
51 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 You can’t directly save an After Effects CS4 project for use in After Effects CS3 or earlier.
52 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 Mid-gray lines between tiles in the flowchart indicate that the Video or Audio switch for those items is deselected in the Timeline panel. Black or light gray lines indicate that the switch is selected, depending on the Brightness setting in the Appearance preferences.
53 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 Change time-display units • To cycle through Timecode Base, Frames, and Feet + Frames, Ctrl-click (Windows) or Command-click (Mac OS) the current-time display.
54 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 Composition basics About compositions A composition is the framework for a movie.
55 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 More Help topics “ Creating layers ” on page 138 “ Preview video and audio ” on page 195 “ Flowchart panel ” on page 51 “ Basics of rendering and exporting ” on page 688 Create a composition You can change composition settings at any time.
56 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 3 Select Single Composition and other settings in the New Composition From Selection dialog box: Use Dimensions From Choose the footage item from which the new composition gets composition settings, including frame size (width and height) and pixel aspect ratio.
57 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 A Preview composition is also created. The Preview composition consists of a grid of device-specific compositions so that you can preview your master composition in the context of several mobile devices simultaneously.
58 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 Composition settings You can enter composition settings manually, or you can use composition settings presets to automatically set frame size (width and height), pixel aspect ratio, and frame rate for many common output formats.
59 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 “ About precomposing and nesting ” on page 60 “ Motion blur ” on page 227 Set composition background color ❖ Choose Composition > Background Color, and then click the color swatch or use the eyedropper to pick a color.
60 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 Precomposing, nesting, and pre-rendering About precomposing and nesting If you want to group some layers that are already in a composition, you can precompose those layers.
61 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 Add another set of transform properties to a layer The layer that represents the composition has its own properties, in addition to the properties of the layers that it contains.
62 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 2 Select one of the following: Leave All Attributes In Leaves the properties and keyframes of the precomposed layer in the original composition, applied to the new layer that represents the precomposition.
63 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 Arrows between the composition names indicate the direction in which pixel information flows for this flow path. The default is to show compositions in the Composition Navigator bar with downstream compositions on the left and upstream compositions on the right.
64 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 Upstream compositions in the Composition Mini-Flowchart are sorted from top to bottom either alphabetically or by layer order. To switch between these sorting orders, press the S key when the Composition Mini-Flowchart is open.
65 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 Transformations are changes to those properties grouped under the Transform category in the Timeline panel, including Anchor Point, Position, Scale, Rotation, and Opacity.
66 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 When a closed mask (with mask mode other than None), a layer style, or an effect is applied to a nested composition with .
67 La s t updated 12/21/2009 Chapter 5: Importing and managing footage items Importing and interpreting footage items About imported files and footage items You import source files into a project as the basis for footage items and use them as sources for layers .
68 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 When After Effects imports video and audio in some formats, it processes and caches versions of these items that it can readily access when generating previews.
69 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 • GIF • JPEG (JPG, JPE) • Maya camera data (MA) • Maya IFF (IFF, TDI; 16 bpc) • OpenEXR (EXR; 32 bpc.
70 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 • QuickTime (MOV; 16 bpc, requires QuickTime) Note: David Van Brink provides the qt_tools toolset on his omino website . This toolset is useful for converting and examining QuickTime files.
71 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 More Help topics “ Alpha channel interpretation: premultiplied or straight ” on page 73 “ Import a singl.
72 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 The interpretation settings tell After Effects the following about each footage item: • How to interpret the interaction of the alpha channel with other channels (See “ Alpha channel interpretation: premultiplied or straight ” on page 73.
73 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 Apply Interpret Footage settings to multiple footage items You can ensure that different footage items use the same settings by copying interpretation settings from one item and applying them to others.
74 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 Some software lets you specify the background color with which the channels are premultiplied; otherwise, the background color is usually black or white. Straight channels retain more accurate color information than premultiplied channels.
75 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 Straight - Unmatted Interprets the channels as straight. Premultiplied - Matted With Color Interprets channels as premultiplied. Use the eyedropper or color picker to specify the color of the background with which the channels were premultiplied.
76 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 Note: Conforming can change the synchronization of visual footage that has an audio track, because changing the frame rate changes the duration of the video but leaves the audio unchanged.
77 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 Pixel aspect ratio and frame aspect ratio Pixel aspect ratio ( PAR ) is the ratio of width to height of one pixel in an image. Frame aspect ratio (sometimes called image aspect ratio or IAR ) is the ratio of width to height of the image frame.
78 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 After Effects reads and writes pixel aspect ratios directly from QuickTime movies. For example, if you import a movie captured as widescreen (16:9 DV), After Effects automatically tags it correctly.
79 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 Projects and compositions created in After Effects CS3 or earlier are upgraded to use the correct pixel aspect ratios when these projects are opened in After Effects CS4.
80 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 Working with footage items Organize, view, and manage footage items in the Project panel Compositions and footage items are listed in the Project panel.
81 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 Show information for items • To show information about a footage item or composition, select it in the Project panel. Information is displayed at the top of the Project panel next to the thumbnail image.
82 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 To open a QuickTime or Video for Windows movie in the Footage panel instead of a player window, Alt-double-click (Windows) or Option-double-click (Mac OS) the footage item in the Project panel.
83 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 • To remove unselected compositions and unused footage items from selected compositions in the Project panel, choose File > Reduce Project. This command is available only when the Project panel is active.
84 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 Proxy items in Project panel A. Proxy assigned and in use B. Proxy assigned, but original in use C.
85 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 For best results, set a proxy so that it has the same frame aspect ratio as the actual footage item. For example, if the actual footage item is a 640x480-pixel movie, create and use a 160x120-pixel proxy.
86 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 Loop a footage item If you intend to loop a visual footage item continuously in your project, you only need to create one cycle of the footage item in After Effects.
87 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 Note: After Effects on Mac OS can’t import Adobe Premiere Pro 1.0, 1.5, or 2.0 projects. After Effects on Mac OS can import Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 and CS4 projects and Adobe Premiere 6.
88 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 • From either After Effects or Adobe Premiere Pro, you can copy and paste footage items to the other’s Project panel. Note: You can’t, however, paste footage items from the After Effects Project panel into the Adobe Premiere Pro Timeline panel.
89 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 Copy from Adobe Premiere Pro to After Effects You can copy a video or audio asset from an Adobe Premiere Pro sequence and paste it into an After Effects composition.
90 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 Importing and interpreting video and audio High-definition (HD) video High-definition (HD) video refers to any video format with pixel dimensions greater than those of standard-definition (SD) video formats.
91 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 Trish and Chris Meyer provide tips for planning and delivering high-definition and widescreen work in articles.
92 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 Interlaced video, noninterlaced video, and progressive scanning Interlacing is a technique developed for transmitting television signals using limited bandwidth.
93 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 Separate video fields and determine field order If you want to use interlaced or field-rendered footage (such as NTSC video) in an After Effects project, you get the best results if you separate the video fields when you import the footage.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
270 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Animation and keyframes La s t updated 12/21/2009 than the surrounding image (such as a burning candle carried through a room). Select Saturation if the tracked feature has a high concentration of color, surrounded by variations of the same color (such as a bright red scarf against a brick wall).
271 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Animation and keyframes La s t updated 12/21/2009 You can rename trackers and track points and modify and animate their property values in the Timeline panel just as you do for other layer properties and property groups. You must click Apply in the Tracker panel to apply the property changes to the target.
272 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Animation and keyframes La s t updated 12/21/2009 • To move only the feature and search regions together, drag the edge of the feature region, or Alt-drag (Windows) or Option-drag (Mac OS) with the Selection tool inside the feature or search region.
273 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Animation and keyframes La s t updated 12/21/2009 Motion source and its motion path A. Moving the feature and search regions B. Keyframe marker More Help topics “ Motion paths ” on page 223 Correct drifting by adjusting the feature and search regions 1 Move the current-time indicator to the last well-tracked frame.
274 La s t updated 12/21/2009 Chapter 9: Color Color basics Charles Poynton provides an excellent set of resources on his website regarding color technology and color terminology. Color depth and high dynamic range color Color depth (or bit depth ) is the number of bits per channel (bpc) used to represent the color of a pixel.
275 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 To change the format in which color values are shown in the Info panel and in some effect controls, choose an option such as Percent or Web from the Info panel menu.
276 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 Because we can see only a subset of the luminance values in a real-world scene in an HDR image on a monitor, it is sometimes necessary to adjust the exposure —the amount of light captured in an image—when working with an HDR image.
277 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 A. Opacity stop B. Color stop C. Opacity midpoint D. Eyedropper E. New-color rectangle F. Original-color rectangle Choose a color picker ❖.
278 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 2 (Optional) To prevent panels from updating with the results of your color selection until you accept the color by clicking OK, deselect Preview in the Color Picker dialog box. The Preview option is not available in all contexts.
279 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 Edit a gradient A gradient is defined by color stops and opacity stops . Each stop has a location along the gradient and a value for color or opacity. The values between stops are interpolated.
280 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 Additional resources for color correction and adjustment John Dickinson provides visual aids on his Motionworks website that illustrate how .
281 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 Histogram showing highlight clipping Histogram showing shadow clipping Color models and color spaces A color model is a way of describing color using numbers so that computers can operate on them.
282 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 Harry Frank provides a video tutorial on his graymachine website that shows how and why to use color conversion expressions to convert colors from the RGB color model to the HSL color model when randomly varying colors.
283 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 Color profiles are said to be scene-referred if their tone-response curves are based on the conditions in the typical scene. Color profiles are said to be output-referred if their tone-response curves are based on the conditions in the typical viewing environment.
284 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 Cineon and DPX footage items A common part of the motion-picture film production workflow is scanning the film and encoding the frames into the Cineon or DPX file format. The DPX (Digital Picture Exchange) format is a standard format closely related to the Cineon format.
285 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 Overview of color management Color information is communicated using numbers. Because different devices use different methods to record and display color, the same numbers can be interpreted differently and appear to us as different colors.
286 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 By setting a working color space for the project (which enables color management), you do two things: • You define a common color space for compositing and other color operations. • You control the appearance of colors in your composition.
287 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 The DPX Theater Preview and DPX Standard Camera profiles provided by After Effects 7 for use with the Proof Colors command have been replaced by the Kodak 2383 and Kodak 5218 profiles used with the Simulate Output command.
288 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 4 Do one of the following to calibrate and profile your monitor: • For best results, use third-party software and measuring devices.
289 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 More Help topics “ Color models and color spaces ” on page 281 “ Color depth and high dynamic range color ” on page 274 Linearize wo.
290 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 In some cases, files that you import have ICC profiles embedded in them. When you import these files, you can be confident that the colors that you see are as the producer of the footage originally intended.
291 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 The output color profile for a render item determines what calculations are performed when converting the colors of a rendered composition from the working color space of the project to the color space for the output medium.
292 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 Enable or disable display color management When color management is on, the default behavior is for RGB pixel values to be converted to the color space of your computer monitor from the working color space for the project.
293 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 During output simulation, colors are converted from the working color space for the project to the color space of the monitor through the following flow: 1. Colors are converted from working color space for the project to output color space.
294 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 Macintosh RGB Show how colors will appear when displayed by a non–color managed application on a Macintosh computer (with a gamma of 1.8). This option is not available if Linearize Working Space is selected.
295 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 Broadcast-safe colors Analog video signal amplitude is expressed in IRE units (or volts in PAL video). Values between 7.5 and 100 IRE units are considered broadcast-safe ; colors in this range do not cause undesired artifacts such as audio noise and color smearing.
296 La s t updated 12/21/2009 Chapter 10: Drawing, painting, and paths Paint tools: Brush, Clone Stamp, and Eraser Paint tools and paint strokes The Brush tool , Clone Stamp tool , and Eraser tool are all paint tools. You use each in the Layer panel to apply paint strokes to a layer.
297 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 • To select paint strokes in the Layer panel, use the Selection tool to click a paint stroke or drag a box around portions of multiple paint strokes. To momentarily activate the Selection tool, press and hold V.
298 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 More Help topics “ Paint tools and paint strokes ” on page 296 “ Paint tools (keyboard shortcuts) ” on page 7.
299 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Brush strokes using 100% roundness (left) and varying percentages (right) Hardness Controls the transition of a brush stroke from 100% opaque at the center to 100% transparent at the edges.
300 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 “ Blending mode reference ” on page 172 “ Layer properties in the Timeline panel ” on page 159 “ Paint tool.
301 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Clone Stamp tool You can use the Clone Stamp tool to copy pixel values from one place and time and apply them at another place and time.
302 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Displaying the clone source overlay while cloning between two different layers A. Clone source overlay B. Current stroke point C. Current sample point Important: To specify settings for a paint stroke before you apply it, use the Paint and Brushes panels.
303 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Note: You can manually manipulate the time and coordinates from which sampling begins by modifying the Offset, Source Time Shift, Source Position, or Source Time values in the Paint panel.
304 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Eraser tool If you use the Eraser tool in Layer Source & Paint or Paint Only mode, it creates Eraser strokes that can be modified and animated.
305 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 More Help topics “ Layer properties in the Timeline panel ” on page 159 “ Managing and animating shape paths an.
306 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 After Effects interpolates a paint stroke (center) between two different shapes created with the same brush (left and right).
307 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Aharon Rabinowitz’s “What are Raster and Vector Graphics?” video tutorial—part of the Multimedia 101 series on the Creative COW website—provides a general introduction to raster images and vector graphics.
308 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Points on a path A. Four corner points B. Four smooth points C. Combination of corner and smooth points When you move a direction line for a smooth point, the curves on both sides of the point adjust simultaneously.
309 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 More Help topics “ Creating shapes and masks ” on page 312 “ Add, edit, and remove expressions ” on page 647 About shapes and shape layers Shape layers contain vector graphics objects called shapes .
310 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Groups and render order for shapes and shape attributes Though the default is for a shape to consist of a single path.
311 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 When you add a shape attribute using the Add menu in the Tools panel or Timeline panel, the attribute is added within the group that is selected. You can drag groups and attributes to reorder them in the Timeline panel.
312 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Create an empty shape group ❖ Choose Group (Empty) from the Add menu in the Tools panel or in the Timeline panel.
313 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 To create a mask that you can move independently of the primary layer that it’s masking, create the mask on a separate white solid layer, and use that solid layer as a track matte for the primary layer.
314 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Minimum Area Specifies the smallest feature in the original image that will be traced. For example, a value of 4 removes features smaller than 2 pixels wide by 2 pixels high from the tracing result.
315 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 More Help topics “ About shapes and shape layers ” on page 309 “ About masks ” on page 375 Create a shape or mask by dragging with shape tools The shape tools are the Rectangle , Rounded Rectangle , Ellipse , Polygon , and Star tools.
316 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 2 (Optional) If drawing a rounded rectangle or rounded square, do the following before releasing the mouse button: • To increase or decrease the corner roundness, press the Up Arrow key or the Down Arrow key, or roll the mouse wheel forward or backward.
317 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 More Help topics “ Keyboard shortcuts ” on page 738 Create a manual Bezier path using the Pen tool 1 With the Pen tool selected and the RotoBezier option deselected in the Tools panel, click in the Composition panel where you want to place the first vertex.
318 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 A vertex appears, and the Pen tool pointer changes to an arrowhead. 2 Drag to modify the length and direction of both direction lines for a vertex, and then release the mouse button.
319 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 • To replace a mask path, select the mask in the Timeline panel, Layer panel, or Composition panel. • To replace a shape path, select the shape path (not the group) in the Composition panel or Timeline panel.
320 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 The new solid-color layer is created at the top of the layer stacking order. For characters that consist of compound paths—such as i and e —multiple masks are created and combined with the Subtract mask mode.
321 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Create a mask or shape from a motion path You can copy position keyframes, anchor point keyframes, or an effect control point’s position keyframes and paste those keyframes into a selected mask path or shape path.
322 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Create a shape path from a motion path 1 In the Timeline panel, click the name of the Position property or Anchor Point property from which you want to copy the motion path.
323 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Rotoscoping tips • Immediately after beginning to draw a mask, press Alt+Shift+M (Windows) or Option+Shift+M (Mac OS) to turn on keyframing for that mask and set a keyframe.
324 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 • To view mask paths in the Layer panel, choose Masks from the Layer panel View menu. • To hide a mask path while showing others, lock the mask by selecting its Lock switch in the Timeline panel, and then choose Layer > Mask > Hide Locked Masks.
325 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Using the Selection tool, click within the layer bounds in the Composition panel. • To deselect all shapes on a layer but leave the shape layer selected, click within the layer bounds but outside all shape paths.
326 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 • To select all masks on a layer, select a mask on the layer, and choose Edit > Select All or press Ctrl+A (Windows) or Command+A (Mac OS). • To deselect all masks, press Ctrl+Shift+A (Windows) or Command+Shift+A (Mac OS).
327 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Note: When you animate rotation using Free Transform Points, the vertices of the mask are interpolated in a straight line from keyframe to keyframe. For this reason, the results may be different from what you expect.
328 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 In most cases, the appropriate pen tool becomes active when you place the Pen tool pointer in a particular context.
329 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 To view the tension value of a vertex, look in the Info panel as you adjust the tension. Change a mask path numerically 1 Select the mask. 2 In the Timeline panel, expand the Mask properties.
330 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 3 Set options in the Mask Interpolation panel, and then click Apply. Note: To interrupt the interpolation process, press Esc. The Info panel indicates that the process has been interrupted and reports the number of keyframes created.
331 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 curved segment; otherwise, it applies the polylines algorithm. Curve applies the algorithm for mask paths that have curved segments. Polyline applies the algorithm for mask paths that have only straight segments.
332 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 When you use the Pan Behind tool in the Composition panel, After Effects automatically makes two adjustments.
333 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Off The mask will not have motion blur. More Help topics “ Motion blur ” on page 227 Shape attributes, paint oper.
334 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 New shapes are created with fill and stroke properties depicted by the swatch buttons next to the underlined Fill and Stroke text controls in the Tools panel.
335 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 By default, when you create a shape path by drawing with the Pen tool, the control points for the gradient are placed in the center of the layer. You can adjust these points after you finish drawing.
336 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Projecting Cap The stroke extends beyond the end of the path for a number of pixels equal to the stroke width in pixels.
337 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Alter shapes with path operations Path operations are similar to effects. These live operations act nondestructively on a shape’s path to create a modified path that other shape operations (such as fills and strokes) can apply to.
338 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 transformations are auto-animated, meaning that they change over time without the need to set any keyframes or add expressions.
339 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 The Merge Paths path operation has the following options, each of which performs different calculations to determine the output path: Merge Merges all input paths into a single compound path.
340 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 The Offset property value is used to offset the transformations by a specific number of copies.
341 La s t updated 12/21/2009 Chapter 11: Text Creating and editing text layers About text layers You can add text to a composition using text layers. Text layers are useful for many purposes, including animated titles, lower thirds, credit rolls, and dynamic typography.
342 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Best practices for creating text and vector graphics for video Text that looks good on your computer screen as you are creating it can sometimes look bad when viewed in a final output movie.
343 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Michael Cardeiro provides a script on the After Effects Scripts website that makes multiple versions of your compositions using information from a spreadsheet or database.
344 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Enter paragraph text When you enter paragraph text, the lines of text wrap to fit the dimensions of the bounding box. You can enter multiple paragraphs and apply paragraph formatting. You can resize the bounding box at any time, which causes the text to reflow within the adjusted rectangle.
345 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 • To select a range of text, click, move the pointer, and then Shift-click. • To select a word, double-click it. To select a line, triple-click it. To select a paragraph, quadruple-click it.
346 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Change the direction of text Horizontal text flows from left to right; multiple lines of horizontal text lie from top to bottom. Vertical text flows from top to bottom; multiple lines of text lie from right to left.
347 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Formatting characters and the Character panel Use the Character panel to format characters. If text is selected, changes you make in the Character panel affect only the selected text.
348 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Choose a font family • Click in the Font Family menu box, and begin typing the name. Continue typing until the desired font family name appears.
349 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Alan Shisko provides an article and video tutorial about kerning on his Motion Graphics 'n Such blog . • To use the built-in kerning information for a font, choose Metrics from the Kerning menu in the Character panel.
350 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Change text fill or stroke color The text you enter gets its color from the Fill Color and Stroke Color controls in the upper-right corner of the Character panel. Select text to change its color after the text has already been entered.
351 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Text scale and baseline shift Horizontal scale and vertical scale specify the proportion between the height and width of the text. Unscaled characters have a value of 100%. You can adjust scale to compress or expand selected characters in both width and height.
352 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Specify how leading is measured 1 Select the paragraphs you want to adjust. 2 Choose Top-To-Top Leading or Bottom-To-Bottom Leading from the Paragraph panel menu. A check mark indicates which option is selected.
353 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 • To reset values in the Paragraph panel to the default values, choose Reset Paragraph from the Paragraph panel menu.
354 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Hanging punctuation for Roman fonts Hanging punctuation controls whether punctuation marks fall inside or outside the margins.
355 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 To smooth the edges and movement of animated text, enable motion blur for the text layer. See “ Motion blur ” on page 227 for more information. For a video tutorial on animating text, go to the Adobe website at www.
356 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Animate text with text animators Animating text with animators and selectors consists of three basic steps: • Add an animator to specify which properties to animate. • Use a selector to specify how much each character is affected by the animator.
357 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Animating the opacity of a text layer using the Opacity animator and the End property You can create elaborate animations using several animators and several selectors, each of which adds its influence to the text animation.
358 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 • To rename an animator group, make sure that it is the only thing selected, and then press Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac OS); or right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) the name and choose Rename.
359 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Use a Wiggly selector to vary a selection within a specified amount over time. Use expression selectors to use expressions to dynamically specify how much you want characters to be affected by an animator property.
360 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Original (left) and with VEN selected by the range selectors, Based On set to Character, Shape set to Triangle, and Scale set to 40% (right) .
361 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Random Seed Calculates the randomized order of a range selector when the Randomize Order option is set to On.
362 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Fill color changes randomly using an expression animator. Text anchor point properties Text animators animate character position, rotation, and size-related properties relative to an anchor point.
363 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 To center the anchor point in a string of capital letters, try a Grouping Alignment value of 0%, -50%. To center the anchor point in a string of lowercase letters, or if you’re using both lowercase and uppercase letters, try 0%, -25%.
364 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 More Help topics “ Creating masks ” on page 312 “ Mask modes ” on page 377 Position text along a mask path 1 Create a text layer and enter text. 2 With the text layer selected, use the Pen tool or a mask tool to draw a mask in the Composition panel.
365 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Richard Harrington provides a detailed, step-by-step video tutorial on the Peachpit website that covers the basics of animating text using text animators and selectors.
366 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 13 Set the Y Rotation value for the layer to -45, rotating the entire layer so that you can more easily see the 3D motion of the characters.
367 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Example: Animate characters with the Wiggly selector This example demonstrates how easy it is to animate the position of individual characters. It also shows how the Wiggly selector can create a dramatic change to the animation simply by adding it to the layer.
368 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Example: Animate text tracking This example shows you how easy it is to isolate characters when tracking a line of text. Using the Tracking and Line Anchor animator properties, you can easily move all but one or a few characters.
369 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Example: Use selectors to animate specific words This example shows how to use selectors to limit an animation to a specific word. Animating the skew values in the characters in the word Speeding 1 Create a new composition.
370 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 6 In the Composition panel, drag the start selector to the left edge of the text (the value will be at 0). 7 Move the current-time indicator to 5 seconds and drag the start selector in the Composition panel to the right edge of the text (the value will be 5).
371 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 “ Text selectors ” on page 358 “ Set or add keyframes ” on page 214 “ Preview video and audio ” on page 195 Example: Animate text position with expressions This example uses the textIndex and textTotal attributes with the wiggle expression to animate a line of text.
372 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 To see the expressions on a layer, select the layer and press EE . More Help topics “ Time display units ” on page 52 “ Time conversion.
373 La s t updated 12/21/2009 Chapter 12: Transparency, opacity, and compositing Compositing overview and resources More Help topics “ Rotoscoping introduction and resources ” on page 322 “ Keyi.
374 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Transparency, opacity, and compositing La s t updated 12/21/2009 Richard Harrington provides a set of video tutorials on the Photoshop for Video website in which he demonstrates how to prepare an image in Photoshop for animation in After Effects using the Puppet tools.
375 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Transparency, opacity, and compositing La s t updated 12/21/2009 Some programs can store multiple alpha channels in one image, but After Effects only interprets the fourth channel as an alpha channel.
376 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Transparency, opacity, and compositing La s t updated 12/21/2009 The position of a mask in the stacking order in the Timeline panel affects how it interacts with other masks. You can drag a mask to different positions within the Masks property group in the Timeline panel.
377 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Transparency, opacity, and compositing La s t updated 12/21/2009 2 In the Timeline panel, expand the layer and mask properties for the mask. 3 Select the mask or keyframes. 4 Copy the mask or keyframes, and paste the mask or keyframes to the layer to which you want to apply the mask.
378 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Transparency, opacity, and compositing La s t updated 12/21/2009 Compound masks that result when different modes are applied to the circle mask. The masks in this illustration have different M ask Opacity values. A. Original masks B.
379 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Transparency, opacity, and compositing La s t updated 12/21/2009 Difference The mask is added to the masks above it in the stacking order. In areas where the mask does not overlap the masks above it, the mask operates as it would alone on the layer.
380 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Transparency, opacity, and compositing La s t updated 12/21/2009 You can also extend or contract the mask edges using the Mask Expansion property to control where the mask feathering appears. (See “ Expand or contract the edges of a mask ” on page 379.
381 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Transparency, opacity, and compositing La s t updated 12/21/2009 Traveling matte A. Track matte layer: a solid with a rectangular mask, set to Luma Matte. The mask is animated to travel across the screen. B. Fill layer: a solid with a pattern effect.
382 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Transparency, opacity, and compositing La s t updated 12/21/2009 If you choose an option other than No Track Matte, After Effects converts the next layer above into a track matte, turns off the video of the track matte layer, and adds a track matte icon next to the name of the track matte layer in the Timeline panel.
383 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Transparency, opacity, and compositing La s t updated 12/21/2009 Keying More Help topics “ Keying effects ” on page 505 “ Matte effects ” on page 516 Keying introduction and resources Note: When a background is not of a consistent and distinctive color, you can’t remove the background with keying effects.
384 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Transparency, opacity, and compositing La s t updated 12/21/2009 Mark Christiansen provides tips and techniques for using Keylight in an excerpt from his book After Effects Studio Techniques: Visual Effects and Compositing on the Peachpit Press website.
385 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Transparency, opacity, and compositing La s t updated 12/21/2009 • For evenly lit footage, adjust keying controls on only one frame. Choose the most intricate frame of the scene, one involving fine detail such as hair and transparent or semitransparent objects, such as smoke or glass.
386 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Transparency, opacity, and compositing La s t updated 12/21/2009 Example of using a hold-out matte A. Original bluescreen image. The background for the number is also blue. B. After keying, the background for the number is also transparent.
387 La s t updated 12/21/2009 Chapter 13: Effects and animation presets Effects and animation presets overview Animation presets overview and resources For a video tutorial on applying and working with effects and animation presets, go to the Adobe website at www.
388 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Save an animation preset 1 Select any combination of properties (for example, Position and Scale) and property groups (for example, Paint and Transform). If you are selecting only effects, you can select them in the Effect Controls panel.
389 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Note: Path operations on shape layers, such as Zig Zag and Pucker & Bloat—which you apply through the shape layer’s Add menu—are called effects in Adobe Illustrator, but they function differently from other effects in After Effects.
390 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Color depth Many effects support processing of image color and alpha channel data at a depth of 16 or 32 bits per channel (bpc). Using an 8-bpc effect in a 16-bpc or 32-bpc project can result in a loss of color detail.
391 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Compound effects and control layers Several effects rely on a control layer (or layer map ) as input.
392 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Chris and Trish Meyer provide an article on the ProVideo Coalition website that explains how to use a simple set of expressions to orient a layer with a Comp Camera effect so that it integrates with other 3D layers in a composition.
393 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 animation preset You can scroll through the list of effects and animation presets, or you can search for effects and animation presets by typing any part of the name in the search box at the top of the panel.
394 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Note: Applying an effect or animation preset to a layer selects the layer. By default, when you apply an effect to a layer, the effect is active for the duration of the layer.
395 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Effect switch in the Effect Controls panel and Effect switch in the Timeline panel A. The Effect switch in the Effect Controls panel turns a specific effect on or off.
396 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 View an effect control point • To view an effect control point in the Layer panel, choose the effect name from the View menu at the bottom of the Layer panel.
397 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Animation preset list This section provides a list of animation presets included with the full version of After Effects CS4.
398 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Fade In Over Layer Below • Fade In+Out - frames • Fade In+Out - msec • Fade Out Over Layer Below • Opaci.
399 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Left Third - scoop mask NTSC • Left Third - scoop mask PAL • Lower Third - scoop mask NTSC • Lower Third -.
400 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Shapes Backgrounds • Box Swarm • Kaleidoscopic • Nerve Net - Circular • Nerve Net - Linear • Nerve Net - P.
401 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Mandathorns* • Neon Flower* • Protection* • Pulsing Snake* • Radar Stopwatch* • Spiral Magic* • Swoo.
402 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Alien Face • Box - dashed lines • Bullseye • Circular - half round • Circular - tri dash • Crosshair -.
403 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • RingingPhone-US Synthetics • Blue Bars • Cells • Digital • Ethereal • Gold Ambiance • Lightning - Ho.
404 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • 3D Rotate around Circle • 3D Rotate in by Character • 3D Rotate out by Word • 3D Scramble in Position Z .
405 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Fly In From Bottom • Fly In With A Twist • Pop Buzz Words • Raining Characters In • Random Fade Up • R.
406 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Evaporate • Foggy • Jiggy • Transporter Curves and Spins • Bloom Flower • Clockwise Entry • Counter .
407 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Flicker Color - scale • Flicker Color • Flicker Green • Inflammation • Pulse Blue • Pulse Orange • P.
408 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Overlay • Pulse Exposure • Shadows • Silhouettes • Sonar Ping • Spin Flash • Word Flash Mechanical .
409 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Elbow Room • Explosion • Hop, Skip, And A Jump • Pendulum • Punching Bag • Question • Rattle • Rol.
410 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Multi-Line Flip • Outgoing - Incoming • Pneumatic • Production • Stack Right Left • Weekdays • Word .
411 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Slice And Dice • Sprouts • Tag Team • Wheatfield • Wind Current • Wobble Paths • 360 Loop • Antelo.
412 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Serpent • Slippery Slope • Spiral Long • Spiral • Springy • Squirmy • Stairwell • Symmetry • Tch.
413 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Increase Tracking • Magnify • Spasm • Stretchy Transform • Separate XYZ Position See “ Separate dimensions of Position to animate components individually ” on page 146.
414 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Fly to Inset • Slide - drop • Slide - straight • Slide - swoop • Slide - variable • Stretch & Blur.
415 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Iris - square • Iris - star unfold • Iris - star • Iris - sunburst unfold • Iris - sunburst • Linear W.
416 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Blur & Sharpen effects gallery The following effects are third-party effects that are not available with the trial version of Adobe After Effects software.
417 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Channel effects gallery The following effect is a third-party effect that is not available with the trial version of Adobe After Effects software.
418 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Color Correction effects gallery No effect applied “ Auto Color and Auto Contrast effects ” on page 453 “ Auto.
419 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 The following effects are third-party effects that are not available with the trial version of Adobe After Effects software.
420 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 “ Bezier Warp effect ” on page 470 “ Bulge effect ” on page 471 “ Corner Pin effect ” on page 471 “ Di.
421 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 The following effects are third-party effects that are not available with the trial version of Adobe After Effects software.
422 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 “ 4-Color Gradient effect ” on page 486 “ Advanced Lightning effect ” on page 487 “ Audio Spectrum effect .
423 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 The following effects are third-party effects that are not available with the trial version of Adobe After Effects software. For information about these effects, see “ Effects overview and resources ” on page 388: • CC Glue Gun effect • CC Light Burst 2.
424 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Noise & Grain effects gallery Paint effects gallery No effect applied “ Add Grain effect ” on page 525 “ D.
425 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Perspective effects gallery The following effects are third-party effects that are not available with the trial version of Adobe After Effects software.
426 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • CC Bubbles effect • CC Drizzle effect • CC Hair effect • CC Mr.
427 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 The following effects are third-party effects that are not available with the trial version of Adobe After Effects software.
428 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 The following effects are third-party effects that are not available with the trial version of Adobe After Effects software.
429 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • CC Grid Wipe effect • CC Image Wipe effect • CC Jaws effect • CC Light Wipe effect • CC Radial ScaleWipe.
430 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 3D Channel effects About 3D Channel effects The 3D Channel effects work on 2D layers—specifically, 2D layers with 3D information in auxiliary channels.
431 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 The ProEXR package from the fnord software website also includes the ProEXR Comp Creator plug-in. This plug-in can create a layer from each of the channels of an OpenEXR file.
432 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 This channel can be used to check your UV maps or as input for the Displacement Map effect. The RE:Vision Effects RE:Map plug-in suite can be used to map alternative textures onto objects.
433 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 To determine the depth of an object, click it in the Composition panel or Layer panel using the Selection tool while the effect is selected. Feather The amount of feather along the edges of the matte.
434 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 More Help topics “ About 3D Channel effects ” on page 430 “ Preparing and importing 3D image files ” on page.
435 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 More Help topics “ About 3D Channel effects ” on page 430 “ Preparing and importing 3D image files ” on page 98 “ 3D layers ” on page 179 ID Matte effect Many 3D programs tag each element in a scene with a unique Object ID.
436 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Audio effects Backwards effect The Backwards effect reverses the audio of a layer by playing the audio from the last frame to the first frame. The frames remain in their original order in the Timeline panel.
437 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Voices The number of voices in the processed (wet) audio. Modulation Rate The rate in Hz at which the modulation cycles. Modulation Depth The amount of modulation. Voice Phase Change The modulation phase difference in degrees between each subsequent voice.
438 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Modulator effect The Modulator effect adds both vibrato and tremolo to audio by modulating (varying) the frequency and amplitude. Modulation Type The type of waveform to use.
439 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Brightness Specifies the amount of detail preserved from the original audio. High brightness simulates a room with live (highly reflective) acoustics. Dry Out, Wet Out The amounts of the original (dry) sound and delayed (wet) sound in the final output.
440 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Blur & Sharpen effects About Blur & Sharpen effects In general, blur effects sample the area around a pixel and assign to the pixel a new value that is the average of the sampled values.
441 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 When Colorize is selected, the Bilateral Blur effect operates on each color channel individually.
442 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Original (upper-left), blur layer (lower-left), and result (lower-right) Maximum Blur The maximum amount, in pixels, that any part of the affected layer can be blurred.
443 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Fast Blur effect When layer quality is set to Best, Fast Blur is a close approximation of Gaussian Blur, but Fast Blur blurs large areas more quickly. Stu Maschwitz compares the Box Blur, Fast Blur, and Gaussian Blur effects in a post on his ProLost blog .
444 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Original (upper-left), Depth Map layer (lower-left), and result (lower-right) Depth Map Layer The control layer from which the depth map is taken. Depth Map Channel The channel of the control layer to use as the depth map.
445 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Original (left), and with effect applied (right) Type Spin blurs in arcs around the Center point, as if the camera were rotating; Amount specifies degrees of rotation.
446 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Original (left), and with effect applied (right) This effect works with 8-bpc and 16-bpc color. Radius How far the filter searches for dissimilar pixels to blur. Threshold How different the values of pixels should be before they are eliminated.
447 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Channel effects Additional resources about Channel effects Satya Meka provides the Separate RGB effect plug-in on the After Effects Scripts website .
448 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 This effect works with 8-bpc and 16-bpc color. Blend With Layer The layer to blend with (the secondary or control layer).
449 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Preserve Transparency Ensures that the alpha channel of the original layer isn’t modified.
450 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Overflow Behavior How the effect remaps values that fall outside the grayscale range of 0-255. • Clip Values above 255 are mapped to 255. Values below 0 are mapped to 0.
451 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 This effect can be used to enlarge or reduce a matte. For example, a white solid area surrounded by black shrinks one pixel on each side using Minimum and a radius of 1.
452 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Set Matte effect The Set Matte effect replaces the alpha channel (matte) of a layer with a channel from another layer above it for the creation of traveling matte results.
453 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Solid Composite effect The Solid Composite effect offers a quick way to create a composite of a new color solid behind the original source layer. This effect works with 8-bpc, 16-bpc, and 32-bpc color.
454 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Blend With Original The transparency of the effect. The result of the effect is blended with the original image, with the effect result composited on top. The higher you set this value, the less the effect affects the layer.
455 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Use the Key Out Unsafe and Key Out Safe settings for How To Make Color Safe to determine which portions of the image the Broadcast Colors effect affects at the current settings.
456 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 More Help topics “ Color correction and adjustment ” on page 279 Change To Color effect The Change To Color effe.
457 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 More Help topics “ Color correction and adjustment ” on page 279 Channel Mixer effect The Channel Mixer effect modifies a color channel using a mix of the current color channels.
458 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Color Link effect The Color Link effect colorizes one layer with the average pixel values of another layer. This effect is useful for quickly finding a color that matches the color of a background layer.
459 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 White Point Place this point on a bright area to stabilize. Sample Size Radius, in pixels, of sampled areas.
460 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Output Cycle controls Use Preset Palette Presets for the Output Cycle. The top palettes are designed for quick color correction and adjustment tasks. The bottom choices offer a variety of built-in color palettes for creative results.
461 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Matching Tolerance How far a color can be from Matching Color and still be affected by the Colorama effect. When Matching Tolerance is 0, the Colorama effect only affects the exact color selected for Matching Color.
462 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 2 If the image has more than one color channel, choose the channel you want to adjust from the Channel menu. RGB alters all channels using a single curve. 3 Use the Bezier tool and the Pencil tool to modify or draw a curve.
463 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Offset Darkens or brightens the shadows and midtones with minimal change to the highlights. Gamma Correction The amount of gamma correction to use for adding an additional power-curve adjustment to the image.
464 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Colorize Hue, Colorize Saturation, Colorize Lightness Specify the hue, saturation, and lightness of the color range chosen from the Channel Control menu. After Effects displays only the sliders for the Channel Control menu choice.
465 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Edge Softness The softness of the color boundaries. High values smooth the transition from color to gray. Match Colors Determines whether RGB values or HSB values are compared.
466 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Input Black and Output Black Pixels in the input image with a luminance value equal to the Input Black value are given the Output Black value as their new luminance value.
467 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • To select a custom color for the filter color, click the color swatch for the Color control to select a color using the Adobe Color Picker, or click the eyedropper and click a color anywhere on the computer screen.
468 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Apply Phase Map To Alpha Applies the specified map and phase to the alpha channel of the layer. If the specified map doesn’t include an alpha channel, After Effects uses the default map (linear distribution of brightness) for the alpha channel.
469 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 lightening only the darkest areas of an image. Specifying a value that is too large for a given image may introduce halos around strong dark to light edges. The default settings attempt to reduce these artifacts.
470 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Tritone effect The Tritone effect alters the color information of a layer by mapping bright, dark, and midtone pixels to colors that you select. The Tritone effect is like the Tint effect, except with midtone control.
471 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 The positions of the vertices and tangents determine the size and shape of a curved segment. Dragging these points reshapes the curves that form the edge, thus distorting the image.
472 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Original image (upper-left), corner moved (lower-left), and final image (lower-right) The AE Enhancers forum describes and links to an animation preset from Donat van Bellinghen for scaling a set of Corner Pin effect points.
473 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 The displacement is determined from the color values of the displacement map. The color values range from 0 to 255. Each value is converted into a scale ranging from -1 to 1.
474 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Mask properties Freeze Area Mask Determines the area of the image in which mask opacity and feather settings affect the distortion. Areas outside the mask are distorted; areas within the mask are distorted according to Mask Opacity and Mask Feather settings.
475 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Displace Reconstructs unfrozen areas to match the displacement at the starting point for the reconstruction. You can use Displace to move all or part of the preview image to a different location.
476 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Soft Uses spline algorithms. If you scale the image beyond 100%, Soft reduces edge pixelation and maintains image quality. Soft works well at large magnification amounts.
477 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Mirror effect The Mirror effect splits the image along a line and reflects one side onto the other. Reflection Center The position of the line about which the reflection occurs.
478 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 width and height. Unlimited resizes the layer as far as it is stretched. This option may require a large amount of memory. Add and match lens distortion with Optics Compensation To match FOV values, layers must be the same size.
479 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Type of Conversion The conversion process to use: • Rect To Polar Moves pixels by using (x,y) coordinates from each pixel as (r, ) coordinates. For example, an (x,y) coordinate of (2,3) becomes a polar coordinate with a radius of 2 and a degree of 3.
480 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Boundary Mask Specifies what part of the image is reshaped. Anything outside the boundary isn’t altered. If not specified, After Effects uses the first mask created as the Boundary mask.
481 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 4 Position the boundary mask to specify the area of the image that will remain unaltered. Areas within the boundary mask are distorted; areas outside the mask remain unaltered.
482 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Wave Width Specifies the distance, in pixels, between wave peaks. Higher values produce long, undulating ripples, and low values produce many small ripples. Wave Height Specifies the height of the ripple wave.
483 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Elasticity Specifies how closely the image follows the shape defined by the curve. Stiff distorts the least, while Super Fluid distorts the most. In general, use the stiffest setting possible that doesn’t create polygonal images.
484 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 More Help topics “ Motion blur ” on page 227 Turbulent Displace effect The Turbulent Displace effect uses fractal noise to create turbulent distortions in an image.
485 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 3 Select Cycle Evolution. 4 Set a value for Cycle that’s evenly divisible by the number of revolutions that you set for Evolution. 5 In the Timeline panel, move the current-time indicator to the time where the cycle completes.
486 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Wave Warp effect The Wave Warp effect produces the appearance of a wave traveling across an image. You can produce a variety of different wave shapes, including square, circular, and sine waves.
487 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Advanced Lightning effect The Advanced Lightning effect creates simulations of electrical discharges. Unlike the Lightning effect, Advanced Lightning doesn’t self-animate.
488 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Termination Threshold Specifies the level at which a path terminates, based on resistance in the atmosphere and possible alpha collision. At lower values, the path terminates more easily when encountering resistance or alpha obstacles.
489 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Use Polar Path The path starts from a single point and appears as a radial graph. Start Frequency, End Frequency The lowest and highest frequencies, in hertz, to display.
490 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Original (upper-left), and with effect applied (lower-left and right) Audio Layer The audio layer you want to display as a waveform. Start Point, End Point The position at which the waveform starts and ends, if Path is set to None.
491 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 This effect works with 8-bpc, 16-bpc, and 32-bpc color. Original (left), and with a simulated beam (right) The Length control specifies the length of the beam based on a percentage of the Time specified.
492 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Wrap Back Values above 255 or below 0 are reflected back into the 0-255 range. For example, a value of 258 (255+3) is reflected to 252 (255-3), and a value of -3 is reflected to 3.
493 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Opacity The opacity of the colored rectangles. Blending Mode The blending mode to use to composite the checkerboard pattern on top of the original layer.
494 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Maintain Original Alpha Maintains the alpha channel of the original layer. If you choose Including Alpha in the Average Pixel Color menu, the original alpha is stenciled over the sampled color.
495 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Mandelbrot, Julia Specify the settings for the specified set. X (Real) and Y (Imaginary) specify the pixels at the center of the image for either the Mandelbrot or Julia set.
496 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Use the arrow keys to pan the center point by 1 pixel. Press Shift as you press an arrow key to adjust the point by 10 pixels. Press Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac OS) as you press an arrow key to adjust the center point of the opposite set.
497 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Single lens flare (lower-left) and multiple lens flares (lower-right) Paint Bucket effect The Paint Bucket effect (formerly Basic Fill effect) is a nondestructive paint effect that fills an area with a solid color.
498 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Choke Contracts the area of the fill color. The Spread Radius value indicates the number of pixels the fill color shrinks from the edge of the fill area. • Stroke Confines the fill to only the border of the selected area.
499 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 pixel image, it may generate a 400x400-pixel image and then scale it down using 4x oversampling. Oversampling provides high-quality results but results in long render times.
500 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Direction Specifies the initial direction of a wave if Velocity is greater than 0. By default, particles are emitted from the producer point in an expanding radial pattern.
501 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 For example, the Scribble effect can simulate fills that look like marker, crosshatching, or textiles. It fills a mask with a single zigzagging line that crisscrosses the path.
502 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Stroke Options Specify the curviness, spacing, and overlap of the scribbled line. • Curviness Controls the amount of curve at the end of each scribbled stroke. Specify a value between 0° and 100°.
503 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Paint Style Specifies whether the stroke is applied to the original layer or to a transparent layer. More Help topics “ Fill effect ” on page 494 Vegas effect The Vegas effect generates running lights and other path-based pulse animations around an object.
504 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Length Determines the length of the stroke of a segment in relation to its maximum possible length. For example, if Segments is set to 1, the maximum length of a stroke is one complete trip around the object outline.
505 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Other methods of animating paint strokes and text are also available. For example, you can animate text by using the type tools and text animators, and you can animate a paint stroke applied with a paint tool.
506 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 The Color Difference Key effect creates transparency from opposite starting points by dividing an image into two mattes, Matte Partial A and Matte Partial B.
507 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 9 Adjust transparency values for each partial matte and for the final matte by dragging one or more of the following sliders in the Matte Controls section: • Black sliders adjust the transparency levels of each matte.
508 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 5 Drag the Edge Feather slider to specify the softness of the edge.
509 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 5 Select the minus eyedropper, and then click areas in the matte thumbnail to subtract other colors or shades from the range of colors keyed out. 6 Drag the Fuzziness slider to soften the edges between transparent and opaque regions.
510 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Note: If the shot doesn’t contain a full background frame, you may be able to assemble the full background by combining parts of several frames in After Effects or Photoshop.
511 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Use the Extract effect In the Effect Controls panel, the Extract effect displays a histogram for a channel specified in the Channel menu.
512 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 In addition to masking a soft-edged object from its background, Inner/Outer Key modifies the colors around the border to remove contaminating background colors.
513 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 The Linear Color Key effect uses RGB, hue, or chroma information to create transparency from a specified key color. This effect works with 8-bpc, 16-bpc, and 32-bpc color.
514 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 6 Adjust matching tolerance in one of the following ways: • Select the Plus (+) or the Minus (-) eyedropper, and then click a color in the left thumbnail image.
515 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 White background of original (upper-left and lower-left) is removed using Luma Key and composited over underlying layer (lower- right).
516 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Original greenscreen (upper-left) leaves green glow when keyed out (lower-left).
517 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Original (upper-left) shows areas of unwanted transparency after using Color Key (lower-left) that are removed with Matte Choker (lower- right).
518 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Original (upper-left) contains unwanted edges after keying (lower-left) that are removed with Simple Choker (lower-right).
519 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Three types of grain effects: matching (upper-left), adding (lower-left), and removing (lower-right) RE:Vision Effects provides the DE:Noise plug-in for removing noise and grain from images.
520 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 When any grain effect is first applied, the Amount value of the Blend With Original controls group is set to 0%; this value determines the percentage of blending between the original image and the processed version.
521 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 6 Adjust the Matching Softness controls to determine the width of the transition band between completely matched and completely unmatched pixels or how smoothly the affected areas blend with the original image.
522 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 The preview region redraws, centered in the new position. 3 To change the dimensions of the preview region, change the Width and Height values in the Effect Controls panel to the desired size, in pixels.
523 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Manually reposition noise samples Automatic grain or sample selection generally gives acceptable results for the Match Grain or Remove Grain effect, but you can choose to manually position and resize each sample or change the sample number.
524 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Working with added or matched grain The Add Grain effect creates new grain or noise in an image by building the grain from nothing or by basing the properties of the grain on presets.
525 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Several factors can affect the apparent color of the grain that these effects generate, including the following: • The color value of the underlying pixel in the source image.
526 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 The distribution of the added noise over the color channels does affect the overall color of the resulting image. With a dark background, the noise tends to add to the image visually, so a red tint or more noise in the red channel gives a reddish hue to the image.
527 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Dust & Scratches effect The Dust & Scratches effect reduces noise and defects by changing dissimilar pixels within a specified radius to be more like their neighboring pixels.
528 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Note: Because the controls for the two effects are nearly identical, you can use most instructions and tutorials created for the Fractal Noise effect to instead guide your use of the Turbulent Noise effect.
529 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 the appearance at 2 revolutions, and so on. To return the Evolution setting to its original state (for example, to create a seamless loop), use the Cycle Evolution option.
530 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 5 Set a value for Cycle. The evolution completes the number of revolutions you specify for Cycle in the amount of time determined by the distance between Evolution keyframes.
531 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 More Help topics “ Working with added or matched grain ” on page 524 Match noise or grain between images 1 Make sure that the source and the destination layers are in the same composition.
532 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 To use this control automatically, set the Compensate For Existing Noise slider to 100%. You can then view the noise samples in the destination layer by choosing Compensation Samples in the Viewing Mode menu.
533 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Original (left), and with effect applied (right) Amount Of Noise The amount of noise to add. Noise Type Use Color Noise adds random values to the red, green, and blue channels individually.
534 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Cycle Specifies the numbers of revolutions of the Noise Phase that the noise cycles through before it repeats (available only when Cycle Noise is selected). Alter the timing of the Noise Phase keyframes to adjust the speed of the Noise Phase cycles.
535 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Note: Good degraining depends on good noise sampling. The results of the automatic sampling depend on the image content and noise type. You can also change the number, size, and position of the samples to get the best results for a particular image.
536 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 5 Adjust any of the following in the Fine Tuning controls group to improve the balance between noise reduction and retained sharpness: Chroma Suppression Suppresses some of the chroma from the noise to clean up the image.
537 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Sharpen an image with Unsharp Mask controls The Remove Grain effect contains Unsharp Mask controls, which increase the contrast of edges and fine details to help restore some of the sharpness that may have been lost during the grain reduction process.
538 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Wrap Back Remaps triangularly, so that values above 1.0 or below 0 fall back into the range. This option reveals subtle detail when Contrast is set above 100. When used as a luma matte, the layer reveals more detailed textured areas of transparency.
539 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Hue Renders the fractal noise as hue values instead of grayscale. The Saturation and Lightness of the original layer are maintained. If the original layer is grayscale, nothing happens.
540 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 For animated strokes, the exact timing (real time) you used to draw the strokes can be played back and rendered. You can adjust the playback speed to fit the timing you want.
541 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Eraser tool Erase areas of the layer, using Brush Type settings defined in the Effect Controls panel.
542 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 The Color Clone affects strokes only while you draw; it has no effect on an already completed stroke. This brush setting is the only one you can’t apply after drawing.
543 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Note: Don’t use the Undo command on the Edit menu to undo Vector Paint actions. Eyedropper Use the eyedropper to select a color to paint with from a sampling anywhere on the desktop.
544 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Play back your painting with Vector Paint Use the Playback Mode pop-up menu in the Effect Controls panel to specify when and how quickly your strokes appear in a composition.
545 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 When you create strokes on a layer, the stroke is tied to the location of the current-time indicator in the Timeline panel when you start drawing. Vector Paint also records the amount of time you take to draw the stroke.
546 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • The values for Re-timer are percentages of the original time required to draw the stroke. The default value is 100%. A higher value causes the drawing time to increase, so that a setting of 200% uses twice the time to draw the selected strokes.
547 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Displacement Detail Determines how much the original shape of the path is altered while wiggling. Greater values increase the detail of displacement (or change in shape) in the stroke.
548 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Composite Paint options A. In Original (default setting), before painting The imported image is visible. B. In Original, with paint stroke The paint strokes appear above the original image.
549 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 the original image. Erasures remove only painting strokes; that is, they re-reveal the underlying image within the alpha channel. K. In Original Alpha Only The original image appears within its alpha channel in working view.
550 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Original (left), and with effect applied (right) To avoid problems with flipped views, keep in mind the following guidelines: • Use the same vertical dimensions for the composition and source images.
551 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Balanced Red Blue LR Performs the same operation as Red Blue LR but also balances the colors to reduce shadows or ghosting effects. • Balanced Colored Red Blue Converts the layer into a 3D view using the RGB channels of the original layer.
552 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Drop Shadow effect The Drop Shadow effect adds a shadow that appears behind the layer.
553 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Copy and paste position keyframes or expressions from a control point for another effect (for example, Lens Flare) to quickly create a shadow that matches the light source for another effect.
554 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Ambient Light Distributes light over the layer. Increasing this value adds an even illumination to all objects and prevents shadows from being completely black.
555 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Original (left), gradient layer (center), and with Card Dance applied (right) Apply Card Dance to the layer to use for the front of the cards.
556 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Transformation Order The order in which the transformations (scale, rotation, and position) are performed. Position, Rotation, and Scale controls Position (X, Y, Z), Rotation (X, Y, Z), and Scale (X, Y) specify the transformation properties you want to adjust.
557 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Eran Stern provides a video tutorial on the Creative COW website in which he demonstrates how to use the Caustics effect with the Wave World effect. Note: The Caustics effect ignores masks and alpha channels on the layer to which it is applied.
558 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Water controls Water Surface Specifies the layer to use as the surface of the water. Caustics uses the luminance of this layer as a height map for generating a 3D water surface.
559 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Original (upper-left), with Foam applied (lower-left), and with a robot layer used as the Bubble Texture Layer (lower-right) You can also substitute any image or movie for bubbles.
560 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 upper-left corner of the screen if you don’t select Zoom Producer Point. If you select Zoom Producer Point, the point moves with the universe as it is zoomed out, and the point ends up closer to the center of the screen.
561 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Pop Velocity Controls how popping bubbles affect each other. When a bubble pops, it affects other bubbles around it by leaving a hole that other bubbles can fill, pushing other bubbles away, or popping other bubbles.
562 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Bubble Velocity faces the bubble in the direction of its motion. This setting is the most useful for flocking-style animations. Environment Map Specifies the layer that is reflected in the bubbles.
563 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 This effect works with 8-bpc color. Particles shooting out of the spacecraft layer (upper-left), text characters use.
564 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 When you use a layer as a source for particles, Particle Playground ignores any changes you’ve made to that layer within that composition, such as changing the Position values.
565 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 With the Grid, a new particle appears on every frame at each grid intersection.
566 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Radius Of New Particles Specifies the radius of the particles resulting from the explosion. This value must be smaller than the radius of the original layer or particle.
567 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Absolute Random Takes a frame at random from the layer, by using a time in the range from 0 to the Random Time Max you specify. Choose Absolute Random when you want each particle to represent a different single frame of a multiframe layer.
568 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Using Selection Text values to differently affect subsets of text You can differently affect only certain subsets of text particles by specifying Selection Text values.
569 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Gravity controls Use Gravity controls to pull existing particles in a direction you specify.
570 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Note: The simulation space is not bounded by the dimensions of the layer to which Particle Playground is applied. You may need to use a selection map that is larger than the Particle Playground layer so that the selection map affects dots that are not visible.
571 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 4 Specify the minimum and maximum values you want the layer map to produce for each Map To group. Min is the value to which a black pixel is mapped, and Max is the value to which a white pixel is mapped.
572 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 result in no adjustment, similar to flat land. Lower pixel values represent less resistance to a particle’s force, similar to a downhill grade. Higher pixel values represent more resistance to a particle’s force, similar to an uphill grade.
573 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • You use a layer map to affect the Scale property of particles and find that the smallest particles aren’t small enough while the largest resulting particles are too large.
574 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 The alpha channel in a control layer modifies the color values in the control layer before Particle Playground uses the control layer’s pixel values. Areas where the alpha channel value is 0 (transparent areas of a control layer) don’t affect particle values.
575 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Original (upper-left), and as Shatter is applied over time to reveal another layer (lower-left and right) More Help .
576 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Render control The Render control renders the whole scene (the default), the unshattered layer, or the shattered pieces independently.
Un punto importante, dopo l’acquisto del dispositivo (o anche prima di acquisto) è quello di leggere il manuale. Dobbiamo farlo per diversi motivi semplici:
Se non hai ancora comprato il Adobe After Effects CS4 è un buon momento per familiarizzare con i dati di base del prodotto. Prime consultare le pagine iniziali del manuale d’uso, che si trova al di sopra. Dovresti trovare lì i dati tecnici più importanti del Adobe After Effects CS4 - in questo modo è possibile verificare se l’apparecchio soddisfa le tue esigenze. Esplorando le pagine segenti del manuali d’uso Adobe After Effects CS4 imparerai tutte le caratteristiche del prodotto e le informazioni sul suo funzionamento. Le informazioni sul Adobe After Effects CS4 ti aiuteranno sicuramente a prendere una decisione relativa all’acquisto.
In una situazione in cui hai già il Adobe After Effects CS4, ma non hai ancora letto il manuale d’uso, dovresti farlo per le ragioni sopra descritte. Saprai quindi se hai correttamente usato le funzioni disponibili, e se hai commesso errori che possono ridurre la durata di vita del Adobe After Effects CS4.
Tuttavia, uno dei ruoli più importanti per l’utente svolti dal manuale d’uso è quello di aiutare a risolvere i problemi con il Adobe After Effects CS4. Quasi sempre, ci troverai Troubleshooting, cioè i guasti più frequenti e malfunzionamenti del dispositivo Adobe After Effects CS4 insieme con le istruzioni su come risolverli. Anche se non si riesci a risolvere il problema, il manuale d’uso ti mostrerà il percorso di ulteriori procedimenti – il contatto con il centro servizio clienti o il servizio più vicino.
