Working With Masks; To View Masks; Selecting Masks, Segments, And Vertices; To Select Masks In The Timeline Panel - Adobe AFTER EFFECTS 7.0 Manual

See also
"About text layers" on page 283

Working with masks

To view masks

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Do one of the following:
•
To view masks in the Composition panel, choose View Options from the Composition panel menu, select Masks
in the Layer Controls section of the View Options dialog box, and then click OK.
•
To view masks in the Layer panel, choose Masks or Anchor Point Path from the Layer panel View menu.

Selecting masks, segments, and vertices

Unlike layers, masks can have more than one level of selection. You can select a mask as a whole path, which is appro-
priate when you want to move or resize a mask. However, if you want to change the shape of a mask, select one or
more points on it. Selected points appear solid, and unselected points appear hollow.
To select or deselect masks in the Layer or Composition panel
•
To select a vertex on a mask, click the vertex with the Selection tool
them.
•
To select a mask segment, click the segment with the Selection tool. To add segments to the selection, Shift-click
them.
•
To select an entire mask, Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click (Mac OS) a segment, vertex, or handle of a mask
with the Selection tool, or select any portion of the mask and choose Edit > Select All or press Crl+A (Windows)
or Command+A (Mac OS). To add masks to the selection, Alt+Shift-click (Windows) or Option+Shift-click (Mac
OS) them.
•
To select masks by dragging, select a mask or portion of a mask to enter mask editing mode and then drag with
the Selection tool to draw a bounding box completely around the vertices or masks that you want to select. To add
masks or vertices to the selection, hold down the Shift key as you draw additional bounding boxes.
•
To select all masks on a layer, select a mask on the layer, and choose Edit > Select All or press Ctrl+A (Windows)
or Command+A (Mac OS).
•
To deselect all masks, press Ctrl+Shift+A (Windows) or Command+Shift+A (Mac OS).
•
To select an adjacent mask on a layer, press Alt+Tilde (~) (Windows) or Option+Tilde (~) (Mac OS) to select the
next mask, or Shift+Alt+Tilde (~) (Windows) or Shift+Option+Tilde (~) (Mac OS) to select the previous mask.
•
To deselect a mask, click anywhere other than on the mask.
•
To remove a vertex or segment from a selection, Shift-click the vertex or segment.
To use the Selection tool when the Pen tool is selected, hold down Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac OS).

To select masks in the Timeline panel

Click the right arrow next to a layer name to expand it.
1
2 Click the right arrow next to the Masks heading to expand it, revealing all masks on that layer.
ADOBE AFTER EFFECTS 7.0
. To add vertices to the selection, Shift-click
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User Guide