Adobe 12040118 Tutorial - Page 51

General user interface items Activate a tool Open panel, viewer, and context menus Columns Search and filter in the Timeline, Project, and Effects & Presets panels Scroll or zoom with the mouse wheel Undo changes After Effects user interface tips Activate a tool To the top 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 G 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 To the top 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 Control-click (Mac OS). This action is sometimes referred to as context-clicking. Columns To the top 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. In After Effects CS5.5 and later, sort footage items in the Project panel, click the column heading. Click once more to sort them in reverse order.