AfterEffects

Work with fonts

A font is a complete set of characters—letters, numbers, and symbols—that share a common weight, width, and style. In addition to the fonts installed on your system, After Effects uses font files in this local folder:

Windows
Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Fonts

Mac OS X
Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts

If you install a Type 1, TrueType, OpenType®, or CID font into the local Fonts folder, the font appears in Adobe applications only.

If the formatting for a character specifies a font that is unavailable on your computer system, another font will be substituted, and the missing font name will appear in brackets. This sometimes occurs when you open a project on Mac OS that was created on Windows, because the set of default fonts differs between the two operating systems.

When you select a font, you can select the font family and its font style independently. The font family is a collection of fonts sharing an overall typeface design; for example, Times. A font style is a variant version of an individual font in the font family; for example, regular, bold, or italic. The range of available font styles varies with each font. If a font doesn’t include the style you want, you can apply faux styles—simulated versions of bold, italic, superscript, subscript, all caps, and small caps styles. If more than one copy of a font is installed on your computer, an abbreviation follows the font name: (T1) for Type 1 fonts, (TT) for TrueType fonts, or (OT) for OpenType fonts.

The font size determines how large the type appears in the image. In After Effects, the unit of measurement for fonts is pixels. When a text layer is at 100% scale value, the pixel values match composition pixels one-to-one. So if you scale the text layer to 200%, the font size will appear to double; for example, a font size of 10 pixels will look like 20 pixels. Because After Effects continuously rasterizes text, the resolution remains high when you increase the scale values.
Note: When choosing fonts and styles from the menus in the Character panel, press Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac OS) to accept an entry, or press Esc to exit the menu without applying a change.

Choose a font family

  • Click in the Font Family menu text box, and begin typing the name. Continue typing until the desired font family name appears.
  • To choose the previous or next font family in the menu, place the pointer over the Font Family menu text box and use your mouse scroll wheel; or click in the Font Family menu text box, and press the Up Arrow or Down Arrow.
  • Click the arrow to the right of the Font Family menu text box, and press the key for the first letter of the font family name. Press the key again to advance through the font families with names that begin with that letter.

Choose a font style

  • Choose from the Font Style menu in the Character panel.
  • If the font family you chose does not include a bold or italic style, you can click the Faux Bold button  or the Faux Italic button  in the Character panel to apply a simulated style.

Choose a font size

 Enter or select a new value for Size  in the Character panel.