Experience how Adobe After Effects handles Photoshop file imports, including which features are preserved and which may cause issues. Understand how to optimize your workflow with layer organization and proper media interpretation for smoother animation development.
Key Insights
- Layer-based properties such as opacity, blending modes, and layer masks from Photoshop are generally preserved in After Effects, while clipping masks and smart objects may not import correctly and could require flattening or alternative workarounds.
- Establishing a color-coded layer system within the timeline can improve visual organization and team communication, as long as all collaborators agree on the meaning of each color used.
- When importing loopable audio or video files, using the “Interpret Footage” feature allows users to control frame rate, alpha channel handling, and set loop durations to match the project timeline; After Effects typically defaults to the file’s original settings unless changed manually.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
Okay, so notice layers came in. Cool. Now, one note.
Photoshop and After Effects are very, very similar to each other. They are layer-based programs. Okay? So things that would actually not be editable if you brought them in in Illustrator are editable here.
For example, layer opacity. If you would change the layer opacity of any of these, that number would be changed there. Blending mode, layer blending mode in Photoshop would also be respected.
Okay? What isn't respected? Clipping masks and many other things. Okay? So, in general, certain things that you may do in Photoshop, like clipping masks, a lot of people love those things, are not supported in import. So you actually, depending on how complex your Photoshop file is, you may get an actual shift in what it looks like.
Okay? Because the reason I don't use clipping masks in Photoshop is because they don't work here, is the reason. So keep that in mind, so depending on what it is, you may get a shift. In that case, you'd want to either flatten whatever is in Photoshop, the layers that need to be flattened, or you would look for a different way of doing it.
I admit, layer masks are fine. They come in, they get applied, they're good. What else? Most effects are fine if you apply them.
Smart objects, for the record, just get flattened, so they don't look any different here. They have no special abilities here. So smart objects are a way of dealing with that clipping mask failure thing.
So, kind of fun. So keep that in mind. Okay.
Now, but everything else, names, opacity, good. They're cool. So that's that creative element importing.
Okay. Organizing the timeline. The program has you color some stuff.
You don't want to color the stuff? That is fine. I'm not going to get on your case about that, okay? So I made that yellow so I can see it. I made everything else, I think, orange.
Yeah. I made that orange for no other reason than I like them. Okay.
And it was just so I can get a little color difference in this. It's fine if you don't want that. It's no problem at all.
But looking at the same layer colors over and over again does become tedious to me. Okay. There is no actual reason for the colors that were chosen here.
Pick a series of colors that have some kind of meaning in your project and just make sure everyone working in After Effects understands the meaning of the colors. Like red means don't touch this, okay, for example. Purple means we change the speed of this because whatever, whatever it means.
Just agree on it and cool. Okay. Now, there are, what is it? There's like two or three other things in this.
Okay, cool. So this is the red blood cell QuickTime file. I'm going to drag it into here.
That is how short it is. Do not add it, by the way. It actually doesn't want you to add it.
Before you change the length. So audio and video files have set lengths. This is the looping audio and video, by the way.
Okay. If I would add the red blood cell QuickTime file right now, that's how long it is, which means it plays and then immediately pops off. Okay.
So this was built as a one second animation, by the way. I'm going to delete that. And, but it was built so that it's a loopable animation, which means this, someone asked me, I think, actually, I think one of you actually, what does interpret footage do? Right click, interpret footage, main, this.
So that video file has transparency. It has an alpha channel built in. How did the program that makes it write the alpha channel? These are the two choices, by the way, straight or pre-multiplied.
You don't need to necessarily know what they mean, but effectively, if it's made one way and the program is interpreting the other, you get a fringe around it. So sometimes you got to go and adjust it if it's not figuring it out properly. Usually it figures it out fine.
You're good. Okay. But ignore would get rid of the transparency, by the way.
Okay. Frame rate. What frame rate is it using by default? Whatever the files frame rate is.
But you could actually change that if you wanted to. Okay. That's just reading the time code.
Fine. Fine. That's loop.
So it's one second long, 30 second timeline. So loop 30 times. Okay.
The new length of that video file is 31 seconds. So I'll say, okay, now when I add that file to my timeline, it's the entire length plus some. So you actually can, it's just more annoying.