Layer Styles - Adobe AFTER EFFECTS CS3 PROFESSIONAL User Manual

AFTER EFFECTS CS3 171
User Guide
Result color has luminance of the underlying color, and hue and saturation of the source color. This preserves
Color
the gray levels in the underlying color. This is useful for coloring grayscale image and for tinting color images.
Result color has hue and saturation of the underlying color, and luminance of the source color. This
Luminosity
mode is the opposite of the Color mode.
Each result pixel is the color of darker of the source color value and the corresponding underlying color
Darker Color
value. This is similar to Darken, but Darker Color does not operate on individual color channels.
Each result pixel is the color of lighter of the source color value and the corresponding underlying
Lighter Color
color value. This is similar to Lighten, but Lighter Color does not operate on individual color channels.
Creates a stencil using the layer's alpha channel.
Stencil Alpha
Creates a stencil using the layer's luma values. The lighter pixels of the layer are more opaque than the
Stencil Luma
darker pixels.
Creates a silhouette using the layer's alpha channel.
Silhouette Alpha
Creates a silhouette using the layer's luma values. Creates transparency in painted areas of the layer,
Silhouette Luma
allowing you to see underlying layers or background. The luminance value of the blend color determines opacity in
the result color. The lighter pixels of the source cause more transparency than the darker pixels. Painting with pure
white creates 0% opacity. Painting with pure black produces no change.
Composites layers normally, but adds complementary alpha channels to create a seamless area of trans-
Alpha Add
parency. Useful for removing visible edges from two alpha channels that are inverted relative to each other or from
the alpha channel edges of two touching layers that are being animated.
Prevents clipping of color values that exceed the alpha channel value after compositing by
Luminescent Premul
adding them to the composition. Useful for compositing rendered lens or light effects (such as lens flare) from
footage with premultiplied alpha channels. May also improve results when compositing footage from other manufac-
turers' matting software. When applying this mode, you may get the best results by changing interpretation of the
premultiplied-alpha source footage to straight alpha.

Layer styles

About layer styles
Photoshop provides a variety of layer styles—such as shadows, glows, and bevels—that change the appearance of a
layer. After Effects can preserve these layer styles when importing Photoshop layers. You can also apply layer styles
in After Effects and animate their properties.
In addition to the layer styles that add visual elements—like a drop shadow or a color overlay—each layer's Layer
Styles property group contains a Blending Options property group. You can use the Blending Options settings for
powerful and flexible control over blending operations.
Though layer styles are referred to as effects in Photoshop, they behave more like blending modes in After Effects.
Layer styles follow transformations in the standard render order, whereas effects precede transformations. Another
difference is that each layer style blends directly with the underlying layers in the composition, whereas an effect is
rendered on the layer to which it's applied, the result of which then interacts with the underlying layers as a whole.