After Effects Basics - 01

1. Interface

Before importing any footage, creating a composition or explaining any features of After Effects we'll need to open After Effects. After that Iíll start showing you the interface. There are three main fragments:
• Menu bar
• Toolbar
• Panels & Frames (Standard)
Menu bar
At the top-left-corner you can see the menu bar. The menu bar is similar to all other menu bars in different programs. Some features are stored in the same menu items as in other Adobe products. I numbered the menu items to say one or two words to each of them:

1. In the second part of this line you can see the currently open project file name.
2. Here you can open, save, import and export your projects and files.
3. An important feature in this section is the preferences area and of course all the undo, redo and editable features.
4. We'll use this menu item to create a new composition but you should definetly check out the other features listed in this section.
5. As many other Adobe products After Effects works with layers. You can use this to create, edit or arrange your layers.
6. Similar to Photoshop you can choose and edit your effects and presets from here.
7. Since we want to create animations in After Effects you should check out this menu item and explore all the features in here.
8. Everybody who already worked in Photoshop knows that rulers, grids and guides are very useful. Here you can find them.
9. Later in this tutorial I'll talk about panels, frames and workspaces. Here you can enable or disable the panels.
10. As a matter of course this Tutorial doesn't cover all the functions and features After Effects is capable of, so you should check out the Help file for more information.