Tutorial: Page (1) of 2 - 02/16/09

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Three Great Overlooked Features of After Effects Some hidden (and not so hidden) features exposed By Kevin McAuliffe

I use Adobe's After Effects alot and I always find myself showing other editors great little hidden features (and sometimes not so hidden) that really help me speed up my workflow. Here are three great ones I use all the time.

Browse Animation Presets
This one is very easily overlooked. Let's say for example you want to have some text you created animate in , but you aren't really sure what you (or the producer for that matter) want. That's where your animation presets come in. Type out the text you want to animate, like I have below.

Now, navigate to ANIMATE>BROWSE PRESETS

Now, the Bridge will open, and you will be presented with a group of folders.

Double click on the "Text" folder, and you will now see that you have alot of options when it comes to animating text.

Now, we are going to simply double click on the "Animate In" folder, and you will now see a whole bunch of animation presets for you to choose from. To preview one, single click on it, and it will appear in the "Preview" window.

Now to apply it, right click on the preset and select "Place in After Effects."

You're done! Now, I just showed an "Animate In" preset. There are many other text presets including glows, blurs and even 3D text just to name a few. This is a feature that if you haven't been using, you definitely should! 

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