AfterEffects

Work with paint tools and paint strokes

The Brush tool , Clone Stamp tool , and Eraser tool are all paint tools. You use each in the Layer panel to apply paint strokes to a layer. Each paint stroke’s brush marks add or remove pixels from the layer or modify the layer’s transparency without modifying the layer source.

Each paint stroke has its own duration bar, Stroke Options properties, and Transform properties, which you can see and modify in the Timeline panel. Each paint stroke is, by default, named for the tool that created it, with a number that indicates the order in which it was drawn.

At any time after you draw a paint stroke, you can modify and animate each of its properties using the same techniques that you use to modify a layer’s properties and duration. You can copy paint stroke path properties to and from properties for mask paths, shape layer paths, and motion paths. For even more power and flexibility, you can link these properties using expressions. (See Creating shapes and masks and Add, edit, and remove expressions.)

Important: To specify settings for a paint stroke before you apply it, use the Paint and Brush Tips panels. To change and animate properties for a paint stroke after you’ve applied it, use the stroke’s properties in the Timeline panel.

Individual brush marks are distributed along each paint stroke—though the marks may appear to merge together to form a continuous stroke with the default settings. Brush settings for each brush in the Brush Tips panel determine the shape, spacing, and other properties of brush marks; you can also modify these Stroke Options properties for each stroke in the Timeline panel.

Groups of paint strokes appear in the Timeline panel as instances of the Paint effect. Each instance of the Paint effect has a Paint On Transparent option. If you select this option, the layer source image and all effects that precede this instance of the Paint effect in the effect stacking order are ignored; the paint strokes are applied on a transparent layer.

To see a video tutorial on using the drawing and painting tools, go to the Adobe website at www.adobe.com/go/vid0223.

  • To show selected layers’ paint strokes in the Timeline panel, press PP.
  • To select paint strokes in the Layer panel, use the Selection tool to click a paint stroke or drag a box around portions of multiple paint strokes.
    To momentarily activate the Selection tool, press and hold V.
  • To show only selected paint strokes in the Timeline panel, select paint strokes and press SS.
  • To rename a paint stroke, select the paint stroke in the Timeline panel and press Enter on the main keyboard (Windows) or Return (Mac OS).
  • To reorder paint strokes within an instance of the Paint effect, drag a Paint stroke to a new location in the stacking order in the Timeline panel.
  • To reorder an instance of the Paint effect to interleave it with other effects, drag the effect to a new location in the stacking order in the Timeline panel.
  • To target a specific instance of the Paint effect for the addition of new paint strokes, choose from the View menu at the bottom of the Layer panel.
  • To hide a paint stroke from view (and from rendered output), deselect the paint stroke’s Video switch .
  • To open or close the Paint panel and Brush Tips panel when a paint tool is selected, click the Toggle The Paint Panels button .
For some painting, drawing, cloning, and retouching tasks, you may want to take advantage of the sophisticated paint tools provided by Adobe Photoshop. See Working with Photoshop and After Effects.