TABLE OF CONTENTS When we first learned After Effects-even after we'd figured out what all the buttons, sliders, doohickies and thingamabobs on the interface did, we were still confused about the effects. Each one seemed like a whole new program.
We got over our fear-slowly-by applying effects to test images, adjusting a single property to see what it did, resetting the effect, and adjusting a second property. We kept doing this until we'd mastered every property of every effect.
At this point, we understood each effect individually, but how to combine them remained a mystery. But we found that after time went by, and we became more and more comfortable using each effect alone, effect mixes started to occur to us naturally. Now they occur to us in our sleep.
In this chapter, we share some of our favorite effect mixes and techniques.
Curves are great tools for color correction-and much easier to use in Photoshop than After Effects. This is because Photoshop's Info Palette displays extra color data while you're adjusting the Curves' filter, information you don't see in AE. Also, in Photoshop, if you have Curves' dialogue window open and Option-click (Alt-click) in your image, Photoshop will display a point on the curve that represents the image pixel you clicked. If you Command-click (Control-click) in the image, Photoshop will plot a point on the curve.
How does this help you in After Effects?
Try exporting a representative frame of your image as a Photoshop file by moving the...
