Learn Adobe After Effects

If you’ve just landed a job that requires you to learn Adobe After Effects, but you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed, don’t worry—this blog post has got you covered. In just 10 minutes, we’ll walk you through the basics of this powerful motion graphics and visual effects software, so you can impress your boss on your first day.

1) Navigating Interface & Learning Adobe After Effects.

When you first learn Adobe After Effects, you’ll be greeted with a familiar layout. On the left, you have the Project panel, where you can organize all your assets, such as images, videos, and audio files. To create a new composition, simply click the button at the bottom of the panel.

In the center, you’ll see the Composition window, which is where your final animation will come to life. By default, it may appear black, as there’s no content in the composition yet. Let’s change that by dragging in some footage.

The Timeline at the bottom works much like the layer panel in Photoshop, allowing you to stack and arrange your different elements. If a layer is above another in the Timeline, it will be visible on top in the final composition.

2) Animating with Keyframes

Now, let’s add some animation to our logo. We’ll start by moving it upwards and fading it in. To do this, we’ll use keyframes—markers that tell After Effects where our logo should be at specific points in time.

First, we’ll position the logo at the bottom of the frame and set a keyframe for its position. Then, we’ll move the playhead forward in the Timeline and drag the logo to the top, creating a second keyframe. After Effects will automatically interpolate the movement between these two keyframes, giving us a smooth animation.

To make the animation feel more natural, we can apply Easy Ease, which adds acceleration and deceleration to the movement. Simply select the keyframes and press F9 on your keyboard.

We can also keyframe the logo’s opacity to make it fade in from the start of the composition.

3) Adding Text and Effects & Learning Adobe After Effects

No motion graphics project is complete without some text. Let’s add a bold, centered title to our composition. After Effects has a built-in Text tool that makes this easy.

To make the text stand out, we can apply a Hue and Saturation effect to the footage layer, desaturating it and decreasing its lightness.

4) Reusing Animations

If you need to use this logo and text animation in multiple compositions, you can pre-compose the layers into a single nested composition. This allows you to make changes to the animation in one place and have them updated across all the compositions where it’s used.

5) Rendering and Exporting

Finally, when you’re happy with your animation, it’s time to render it out. After Effects has a built-in Render Queue where you can choose your output settings, such as codec and resolution. For high-quality delivery, the Apple ProRes 422 HQ codec is a great choice.

If you need a smaller file size for web or email, you can also export directly to H.264 using Adobe Media Encoder.

CONCLUSION

With these basics under your belt, you’re well on your way to creating professional-looking motion graphics in Adobe After Effects. Remember, the more you practice, the more comfortable and confident you’ll become with this powerful software. Good luck on your first day!

FAQ: Learn Adobe After Effects: Basic

1. How do I open a new composition in After Effects?

Click the “Create New Composition” button at the bottom of the project panel.

2. What are the best settings for a new composition?

A common starting point is 1920×1080 resolution at 24 frames per second.

3. How do I animate a layer in After Effects?

Use keyframes to set the starting and ending positions, then apply Easy Ease to create natural movement.

4. How do I render my animation in After Effects?

Add the composition to the Render Queue, choose your output settings, and click Render.

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