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After Effects is one of the many programs included in the Adobe Creative Suite. AE is a popular tool among video editors, and it’s most often used for video composition and motion graphics. Current version is After Effects CC 2018 (15.1.2) (July 17,2018).The April 2018 releases of After Effects roll out exciting new features for visual effects artists, graphic editors, and animators.

The file extension for, Adobe After effects project is .aep.

Essentially, expressions are a way to work with complex animations without creating hundreds (or even thousands) of individual keyframes. Expressions will link the properties of one layer to dynamically animate other layers, creating a faster and more efficient workflow. Expressions are similar to scripts, and allow the user to have more granular control of layer attributes.

The purpose of key frames is to:

Set parameters for audio, motion, visual effects and many other properties for any image, object etc.

Used for animation purpose, by setting key frames and adobe after effects properties, image can be moved as if it’s a video.

The function of the key frames is to set parameters for audio, motion, visual effects and many other properties for any image or object by changing them over time.  After effects is mostly used for animation purpose, and by setting key frames and after effects properties, they can move the image as if they are a video.

CTI stands for Current Time Indicator, and it controls the time line of the footage in the composition panel. With the help of CTI you can move the footage backward or forward.

Function of Scale:

It makes a picture or an object, grow or shrink.

Once the picture is selected, a scale menu in the composition panel will appear. Click on the tab in front of the “scale” bar which is known as stop watch, and now the picture is ready to grow or shrink.

To control the size of the picture, on the right hand side of the “Scale bar” there is a number, for increasing and decreasing. With the help of numbers one can grow and shrink the size of the picture.

To get into the exact spot of footage, in the control panel below the composition screen there is a tab showing time. On double clicking the tab, it will open a window where you can adjust the time and you can reach to the exact spot of the footage.

While you are on the composition panel, by pressing apostrophe (!) key will show you the area that will cut out from the footage.

It makes your picture or object, grow or shrink. Once the picture is selected, you will see a scale menu in the composition panel. Click on the tab infront of the “scale” bar known as stop watch, and the picture is ready to grow or shrink.  To control the size of the picture, on the right-hand side of the “Scale bar” you will see a number, increasing and decreasing those, number you can grow and shrink the size of the picture.

The time frame will be indicated with a yellow dot, by clicking on that yellow button and then pressing the delete button, you can delete the previous time frame.

In the composition panel, select rotation option by pressing ‘r’ on your keyboard. Now on the right hand side you will see numbers, which show how much degree you want to rotate the picture. You can rotate the picture by increasing and decreasing those numbers.

There are three axis x, y and z that your picture can rotate and to select the axis, you have to click on the right side of one of the three boxes that resides right below the “Tool bar”. The “Tool bar” is between the “Source Name” bar and “Parent” bar in the composition panel.

Slowing down the speed of your moving picture is known as ‘ease in’ while to bring it back to its original speed is known as ‘ease out’.

Graph editor can help you to change the rotation speed and the degree of rotation. It is in the corner of the composition panel on the right hand side.

Motion sketch is a path you want your object and picture to drop or move.  For motion sketch, click on the window tab in menu bar and select Motion Sketch option from the window bar.  Now you can draw the path and make your image move accordingly.

In edit bar, if you select split option you can split your video clip into two sections or layer. So, when you want to do animation separately for each layer or each video clip you have separated, you can do it by using split layer option.

When you press F4 , “Mode” option will appear in the composition panel. When you click on the mode option, it will come with a list of option like color, multiply, darker, hard light, overlay etc. By using this option you can not only change the appearance of image but also can blend or overlap two images on each other and make it appear as single image.

The mask is the technique by which you can select the specific area within the image or picture you want to modify while leaving the rest of the image steady, the short key to select image in mask is Ctrl+T.