From the course: Getting Started in After Effects for Photoshop Users

Work with Photoshop text in AE

From the course: Getting Started in After Effects for Photoshop Users

Start my 1-month free trial

Work with Photoshop text in AE

- [Narrator] To get started animating lower third, let's convert the Photoshop text layer to make it editable and interactive in after effects. I don't actually plan to animate the individual letter forms, but I'm going how to to do it anyway. So right now, my text layer is just one block, I can drag it around. Notice when I drag it down, I'm getting a shadow cast on to the yellow, and that's going to become an important part later, it is from the layer style. Drop shadow right there. So that's something were going to want to make sure we preserve. Any case, if I choose my type tool right now, and click on this layer, I don't get to edit it, I'm creating a new layer, not what I want. Instead, with the layer selected, I can either right-click, or go up to the layer menu, and choose create, convert to editable text. Now, it looks the same, which is great, and if I twirl down, my layer style is still there. But what I can do now is, for example, add a middle initial, I kind of doubt that's the middle initial. I could select all the text and track it out more if I wanted to do that. Or, I could apply a text animation, and when I say apply, what I mean is, I'm going to use one of the presets to show you this. Now again, not my plan to do this, so this is just a bit of show and tell. Under effects and presets, in the animation presets category at the top, under text, I have a lot of options. Now, some of the ones I might start with in this case are the ones marked animate in. And they give you descriptions of what they do. I'm going to go with one that's entitled typewriter. It's often a starting point that I use. I'm going to turn off the audio so we don't listen to it as we preview these and let's just take a look at what we've got. Very simple, and with my U key to reveal the key frames, I could tighten it up just by moving the second key frame in. But that's about all there is to that one. So I'll just undo to remove that one. Now there are a lot of options here, and a lot of them are going to call a lot of attention to themselves to put it charitably. But let's just take a look at one that's both kind of fun and a little too over the top for what we want to do right here. I'll choose 3D flip. I guess it's 3D flip in rotate X, I was going to say 3D flip and rotate X, but it's a 3D flip in that rotates on the X. All right, and you see my 3D gizmo, so, let's preview it and then I'll explain. - Rebecca William. - [Narrator] And I undid my turning off the audio. Okay. So, we have true 3D happening here, and to prove that I can click on this gizmo, and rock it back in 3D space, and there it remains. And when you see the video degrading like that, that is actually just something that after effects does to give you real time playback when it's having trouble. So that's really awesome, but again, just simply not what I want. So again, I will undo. And we're going to move forward without any of these text animation presets, but I do encourage you to play with them. So now you know that you can work with type treatments from Photoshop directly in after effects and animate them. Now that you've glimpsed more of what's possible with texts and after effects, let's put this design in motion.

Contents