General user interface items

Activate a tool

The Tools panel can be displayed as a toolbar across the top of the application window or as a
normal, dockable panel.

Note: Controls related to some tools appear only when the tool is selected in the Tools panel.

 Click the button for the tool. If the button has a small triangle at its lower-right corner,
hold down the mouse button to view the hidden tools. Then, click the tool you want to
activate.
 Press the keyboard shortcut for the tool. (Placing the pointer over a tool button
displays a tool tip with the name and keyboard shortcut for the tool.)
 To cycle through hidden tools within a tool category, repeatedly press the keyboard
shortcut for the tool category. (For example, press the Q key repeatedly to cycle
through the pen tools.)
 To momentarily activate a tool, hold down the key for the desired tool; release the key
to return to the previously active tool. (This technique does not work with all tools.)
 To momentarily activate the Hand tool, hold down the spacebar, the H key, or the
middle mouse button. (The middle mouse button does not activate the Hand tool
under a few circumstances, including when the Unified Camera tool is active.)

To pan around in the Composition, Layer, or Footage panel, drag with the Hand tool. Hold
Shift, too, to pan faster.

To show or hide panels most relevant to the active tool, click the panel button if
available. For example, clicking this button when a paint tool is active opens or closes the
Paint and Brushes panels. Select the Auto-Open Panels option in the Tools panel to
automatically open the relevant panels when certain tools are activated.

Open panel, viewer, and context menus

Panel menus provide commands relative to the active panel or frame. Viewer menus provide
lists of compositions, layers, or footage items that can be shown in the viewer, as well as
commands for closing items and locking the viewer. Context menus provide commands
relative to the item that is context-clicked. Many items in the After Effects user interface have
associated context menus. Using context menus can make your work faster and easier.

 To open a panel menu, click the button in the upper-right corner of the panel.
 To open a viewer menu, click the name of the active composition, layer, or footage
item in the viewer tab.
 To open a context menu, right-click (Windows or Mac OS) or Control-click (Mac
OS). This action is sometimes referred to as context-clicking.

Columns

The Project, Timeline, and Render Queue panels contain columns.

  To show or hide columns, right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) a column
heading (or choose Columns from the panel menu), and select the columns that you
want to show or hide. A check mark indicates that the column is shown.

Note: In general, the search and filter functions in the Project and Timeline panels only
operate on the content of columns that are shown.

 To reorder columns, select a column name and drag it to a new location.

 To resize columns, drag the bar next to a column name. Some columns cannot be
resized.
 To sort footage items in the Project panel, click the column heading. Click once more
to sort them in reverse order.

Search and filter in the Timeline, Project, and Effects & Presets panels

The Project, Timeline, and Effects & Presets panels each contain search fields that you can
use to filter items in the panel.

 To place the insertion point in a search field, click in the search field.
 To place the insertion point in the search field for the active panel, choose File > Find
or press Ctrl+F (Windows) or Command+F (Mac OS).
 To clear the search field, click the button that appears to the right of the text in the
search field.

When you type in the search field, the list of items in the panel is filtered, showing some
items and hiding others. Only items with entries that match the search query that you’ve
typed are shown. The folders, layers, categories, or property groups that contain the matched
items are also shown, to provide context.

In general, only text in columns that are shown is searched for this filtering operation. For
example, you may need to show the Comments column to search and filter by the contents of
comments.

If one or more layers are selected in a composition, the filtering operation in the Timeline
panel only affects selected layers. In this case, unselected layers are not filtered out (hidden)
if they don’t match the search query. However, if no layers are selected in the composition,
the filtering operation applies to all layers in the composition. This behavior matches that for
showing and hiding of layer properties by pressing their property shortcut keys.

Clearing the search field and ending the search causes expanded folders and property groups
to collapse (close). Therefore, it’s easier to work with the items that are found by the filter
operation if you operate on them before you clear the search field and end the search.

If the text that you type in the search field in the Project or Timeline panel contains spaces,
the spaces are treated as and-based operators. For example, typing dark solid matches footage
items or layers named Dark Red Solid and Dark Gray Solid. In the Effects & Presets panel,
spaces are treated as space characters in the search field. For example, typing change color
matches the Change Color effect, but not the Change To Color effect.
Project, Timeline, and Effects & Presets panels accept or-based searching. In an or-based
search, a comma denotes an or, with and-based operators taking precedence over or-based
ones. For example, sometimes the name of the property that determines the amount for a blur
effect is Amount, sometimes it is Blurriness, and sometimes it is Blur Radius. If you search
for Amount, Blurriness, Radius, then you will see the equivalent values for all of your blur
effects.

When you type in a search field, recent search strings that match your input appear.

This search method also allows a way to save items you use often via a menu that opens
when you click the search icon in the search field. The search menu consists of two lists,
separated by a divider. The top list contains the six most recent searches, with the most recent
one at the top. The bottom list contains saved search items. As you type, the top list filters to
show matching terms.

 To save a search item, Shift-click it in the top list of the search menu. Up to ten items
may be saved.
 To delete a saved search item from either list, hover the mouse over the the item to
highlight it, and then press Delete or Backspace.

Examples of searches in the Project panel

 To show only footage items for which the name or comment contains a specific
string, start typing the string.
 To show only footage items for which the source file is missing, type the entire word
missing. (This search works whether or not the File Path column is shown, which is
an exception to the general rule that only shown columns are searched.)
 To show only unused footage items, type the entire word unused.
 To show only used footage items, type the entire word used.
 To show only Cineon footage items, type Cineon with the Type column shown.

Examples of searches in the Timeline panel

 To show only layers and properties for which the name or comment contains a
specific string, type the string. For example, type starch to show pins created by the
Puppet Starch tool.
 To show only properties that have an expression that uses a specific method, type the
method name.
 To show only layers with a specific label, type the label name.

Click the swatch for a label to see the context menu that lists the label names.
Alternatively, drag the right edge of the Label column heading to expand the column
to read the label names.

Scroll or zoom with the mouse wheel

You can use the mouse wheel to zoom in the Timeline, Composition, Layer, and Footage
panels. You can use the mouse wheel to scroll in the Timeline, Project, Render Queue,
Flowchart, Effect Controls, Metadata, and Effects & Presets panels.
  To zoom into the center of the panel, or into the feature region when tracking, roll the
mouse wheel forward.
 To zoom out of the center of the panel, or out of the feature region when tracking, roll
the mouse wheel backward.
 To zoom into the area under the pointer, hold down Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac
OS) as you roll the mouse wheel forward. In the Timeline, Footage, and Layer panels,
this action zooms in time when the pointer is over the time navigator or time ruler.
 To zoom out of the area under the pointer, hold down Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac
OS) as you roll the mouse wheel backward. In the Timeline, Footage, and Layer
panels, this action zooms in time when the pointer is over the time navigator or time
ruler.
 To scroll vertically, roll the mouse wheel forward or backward.
 To scroll horizontally, hold down Shift as you roll the mouse wheel backward or
forward. In the Timeline, Footage, and Layer panels, Shift-rolling backward moves
forward in time and vice versa when the pointer is over the time navigator or time
ruler.

You can scroll or zoom with the mouse wheel in a panel even if it is not currently active, as
long as the pointer is over it.

Undo changes

You can undo only those actions that alter the project data. For example, you can undo a
change to a property value, but you cannot undo the scrolling of a panel or the activation of a
tool.

You can sequentially undo as many as 99 of the most recent changes made to the project.

To avoid wasting time undoing accidental modifications, lock a layer when you want to see it
but do not want to modify it.

 To undo the most recent change, choose Edit > Undo [action] or Ctrl-Z
 To undo a change and all changes after it, choose Edit > History, and select the first
change that you want to undo.
 To revert to the last saved version of the project, choose File > Revert. All changes
made and footage items imported since you last saved are lost. You cannot undo this
action.

After Effects user interface tips

 Use ClearType text anti-aliasing on Windows. ClearType makes the outlines of

system text, such as menus and dialog boxes, easier to read. See Windows Help for
information on how to enable ClearType text anti-aliasing.
 To show tool tips, select the Show Tool Tips preference (Edit > General > Preferences
(Windows) or After Effects > Preferences > General (Mac OS)).
 Use a workspace that contains the Info panel, and leave that panel in front of other
panels in its panel group whenever possible. The Info panel shows messages about
what After Effects is doing, information about items under the pointer, and much
more.
 In Windows, disable the Aero compositing mode. Hardware acceleration of panels
and OpenGL features perform better in After Effects when Windows is operating in
Basic mode.
 Use context menus.
 Use keyboard shortcuts.