Adobe AFTER EFFECTS CS3 PROFESSIONAL User Manual page 353

AFTER EFFECTS CS3 347
User Guide
About effects
After Effects includes a variety of effects, which you apply to layers to add or modify video and audio characteristics.
For example, an effect can alter the exposure or color of a layer's image, add new visual elements, manipulate sound,
distort images, remove grain, enhance lighting, animate text, or create a transition.
You browse and apply effects using the Effects & Presets panel. You modify effect properties using the Effect Controls
panel or Timeline panel or by moving effect control points in the Layer panel or Composition panel.
You can apply multiple instances of the same effect to a layer, rename each instance, and set the properties for each
instance separately.
To see a video tutorial on applying and working with effects, visit the Adobe website at www.adobe.com/go/vid0228.
Note: Path operations on shape layers, such as Zig Zag and Pucker & Bloat—which you apply through the shape layer's
Add menu—are called effects in Adobe Illustrator, but they function differently from other effects in After Effects.
Because effects are implemented as plug-ins, you can install and use additional effects that parties other than Adobe
provide. You can add a single new effect or an entire folder of new effects to the Plug-ins folder, which is located by
default in the Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects CS3\Support Files (Windows) or Applications/Adobe After
Effects CS3 (Mac OS) folder. When After Effects starts, it searches the Plug-ins folder and its subfolders for all
installed effects and adds them to the Effect menu and to the Effects & Presets panel. After Effects ignores the
contents of folders with names that begin and end in parentheses; for example, the contents of the folder
(archived_effects) will not be loaded.
Adobe provides many third-party effect plug-ins with After Effects. Keylight, Color Finesse, and Cycore FX plug-ins
are installed by default with the After Effects application. For information, see the documentation for these plug-ins
in this folder: Adobe After Effects CS3/Additional Documentation.
For more information on the various categories of After Effects effects, see "Effect reference" on page 354.
Animating effects
You animate effect properties in the same way that you animate any other properties—by adding keyframes or
expressions to them. In most cases, even effects that rely on animation for their normal use require that you set some
keyframes or expressions. For example, animate the Transition Completion property of a Transition effect or the
Evolution setting of the Fractal Noise effect to turn a static effect into a dynamic effect.
Color depth
Many effects support processing of image color and alpha channel data at a depth of 16 or 32 bits per channel (bpc).
Using an 8-bpc effect in a 16-bpc or 32-bpc project can result in a loss of color detail. If an effect supports only 8 bpc,
and your project is set to 16 or 32 bpc, the Effect Controls panel displays a warning icon next to the effect name.
You can set the Effects & Presets panel to list only the effects that support the color depth of the current project. (See
"Set the color depth" on page 234.)
Render order
The order in which After Effects renders masks, effects, layer styles, and transform properties—called the rendering
order—may affect the final result of an applied effect. By default, effects appear in the Timeline panel and Effect
Controls panel in the order in which they were applied. Effects are rendered in order from top to bottom in this list.
To change the order in which effects are rendered, drag the effect name to a new position in the list. (See "Render
order and collapsing transformations" on page 119.)
An effect applied to an adjustment layer affects all layers below it in the layer stacking order in the Timeline panel.
(See "Create an adjustment layer" on page 140.)