Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects, 5th Edition

22 Applying and Using Effects

After animating layers comes treating their images with special effects

One of the richest areas for exploration in After Effects is its “effects” side. The variety of effects supplied with After Effects ranges from the extremely utilitarian to the extremely wild, each with anywhere from one to over 100 parameters you can adjust. Fortunately, virtually all effects share the same basic methods of adjusting and animating those parameters.

In this chapter, we will start with an overview of how to apply and edit effects. We’ll then move onto some more sophisticated tricks using effects, such as animating their Effect Point, using adjustment layers, exploiting mask paths, and adding blending modes. We’ll end with Layer ...