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This Web Edition is available for free with the purchase of the Adobe After Effects CC Classroom in a Book (2015 release) print book or eBook. A Web Edition is an electronic version of the book that can be accessed with any Internet connection from your account on www.peachpit.com. This Web Edition includes 10 hours of step-by-step video tutorials and interactive review questions. As Adobe releases new features for Creative Cloud customers, the content of the Web Edition will be updated to accommodate the changes. Note: Web Editions cannot be viewed on an eReader. To view this book on an eReader, please purchase an eBook.
Creative professionals who seek the fastest, easiest, most comprehensive way to learn Adobe After Effects CC (2015 release) choose this Classroom in a Book® from the best-selling series of hands-on software training workbooks. This series offers what no other book or training program does—an official training series from Adobe Systems Incorporated, developed with the support of Adobe product experts.
Adobe After Effects CC Classroom in a Book (2015 release) contains 14 lessons that cover the basics and beyond, providing countless tips and techniques to help you become more productive with the program. You can follow the book from start to finish or choose only those lessons that interest you. As with all Classroom in a Book products, online companion files include all the necessary assets you need to complete the projects featured in each lesson.
Learn how to use Adobe After Effects CC to create, manipulate, and optimize motion graphics for film, video, DVD, the web, and mobile devices. Gain hands-on experience animating text and images, customizing a wide range of effects, rotoscoping, and correcting color. Learn to create 3D content with both After Effects and Maxon Cinema 4D Lite (included with the software).
What you need to use this product: Adobe After Effects CC (2015 release) software, for either Windows or Mac OS. (Software not included.)
- Sales Rank: #60673 in Books
- Published on: 2016-01-03
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x .80" w x 7.30" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 416 pages
About the Author
Lisa Fridsma has long loved the process of teaching others to use Adobe products. She has written, edited, and designed over thirty books in the Classroom in a Book series over the last decade and a half (including books on Photoshop and After Effects), going back to her time on-staff at Adobe. She’s currently the owner of Darlington Hill Productions (Informational illustrations and publishing). Lisa lives in Bethesda, MD with her family and two above-average dogs.
Brie Gyncild aims to make technical information accessible to those who need it. Brie has authored The Photoshop CS5 Pocket Guide and The Photoshop Elements 8 Pocket Guide. She has also co-written The Photoshop Show Starring Russell Brown; numerous editions of the Classroom in a Book series on Photoshop, After Effects, Flash, and Acrobat; and several editions of the How to Wow series. Brie lives in Seattle with two cats and an overgrown garden.
Most helpful customer reviews
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful.
WAY overpriced 1950's book about a 21st Century Product
By Michael D. Kelley
I want to be clear here -- this isn't a *terrible* book. It just isn't anything that anyone should buy who wants to learn After Effects. Not in this day and age.
The problem is this book reads like a classroom book of the 50's (and I'm an old guy who remembers such things). This is for a state-of-the-art post FX processor bar none, one that sizzles with the kinds of amazing things it can do. You read this book and you could easily go "ho-hum. Why did I ever WANT this program?"
About 95% of the things covered here you can learn on your own in a few days -- again, I'm a very old man and I did it, and if you are older than, say, 12 years old you will be able to as well (younger folks might well need the kind of hand-holding going on here).
What is missing, though, is all the *really* cool and wonderful things you can do in AE, and luckily there is a terrific source for all of these and it's this thing called the internet. Spend a few moments Googling how to use some of the tools here and you'll see some videos that will teach you far more in 10 minutes than this book can teach in hours.
This book *might* be worth owning if you needed some sort of hard copy reference book for those times you aren't near a computer and want to... wait a moment. There ISN'T any time you aren't near a computer that you need a reference for AE. If you are, there are FAR better ways to get it (again, think about this wonderful thing called the net).
For less than $20 I might pick this book up just for the 5% of things that I didn't immediately notice. But at this price? Save your money.
15 of 18 people found the following review helpful.
4.7 Out of 5 Stars
By Brian M. Stoppee
After Effects (Ae) came into the Adobe corral of apps when they acquired Aldus, primarily to gain the technology which became Adobe InDesign. Even before the Aldus days. CoSA After Effects was producing dazzling motion graphics since 1993. It became a mainstay in video postproduction editing suites. It took time, but Ae has found its way into major Hollywood feature films and is a compelling animation engine behind broadcast news graphics all over the globe.
Once Adobe started their subscription Creative Cloud service, Ae became more accessible. A monthly fee gets subscribers the 16 core apps, which make up the full Adobe Creative Cloud (CC) desktop offering. So, those who sign-up for Premiere Pro, Photoshop, and Audition also get After Effects as part of the deal. Big broadcasters, film studios, and other media conglomerates are buying hundreds, sometimes thousands, of subscriptions for their staffers.
So why is this called "Adobe After Effects CC 2014 Release Classroom in a Book"? The "2014" is a new branding Adobe came up with to indicate that apps have made a full version number bounce forward. Ae CC went version 12, in June of 2013. In June of 2014, Ae 13.0 was announced.
Adobe pumps out new features to apps a few times a year. As we write this, After Effects 13.2 is the man of the hour. This is a change from the previous 18 to 24 month release cycle. So, our friends at Adobe Press find themselves sending a new set of Classroom in a Books to press once a year.
The Classroom in a Book Role + Legacy
Much like those who master Photoshop and Illustrator, the work of Ae artists can easily be so impressive that some feel After Effects is too intimidating to be approachable. Nothing could be further from the truth. Ae is packed with power and, yes, some After Effect masters do impressive work. Yet, as with many Adobe apps, which have a decades-long legacy, all you need is a well-planned and tested learning experience to give you a can-do attitude about Ae. That's part of the role which Classroom in a Book (CIB) plays.
After Effects was among the original titles for the first 1997 set of CIBs. At the time, CIB was supposed to be something of an official study guide to becoming an Adobe Certified Expert (ACE). 18 years ago, that was quite a goal to squeeze all those features into a single volume for each Adobe app. But, people were becoming certified in Microsoft Windows and the Windows Server functions, so it made sense for Adobe to have a similar proof of capabilities pathway.
This is the 112th CIB which we have carefully studied cover to cover and we have not studied all of them. However, the days of these books, and their matching lessons, being a complete guide to the ACE exam is long over. The desktop apps of the CC subscription, are way too big to fit into one volume for each app. There are 12 CIBs to cover that. The books follow the direction of the ACE exams. Adobe Bridge (Br) and Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) are in the Photoshop exam and CIB, just as Adobe Prelude (Pl) and Adobe Media Encoder (AME) are fused into Premiere Pro. Yet, you'll see Br and AME referenced in this volume, since they are apps which serve many other apps.
We're Adobe Creative Professionals (ACP) and we run media studies training centers which are within the Virginia higher education system. Obviously, Adobe and Apple play import roles in those programs. The Adobe Press (a.k.a. Peachpit and Pearson Educational) materials are important to us as we develop syllabuses. The majority of our Adobe/Apple Certified Instructors (ACIs) use CIB as the foundation of the classroom training they do with our company.
For us, these books are study guides as to how we can be sure that we are up to speed on every foundational, new, and important aspect of how apps, like After Effects, must be understood and mastered. We have created our "Mapped App" series as a study guide to important books for creative professionals. They are both our navigational tool, on each chapter, plus an item-by-item checklist of what needs to be mastered in each learning resource.
As anyone who has read our years of amazon.com book reviews knows, we're quite candid and sometimes brutal. Since we are ACPs, published authors, and regular contributors to other author's books, we are buddies with hundreds of our fellow educators to the creative professional community. Andrew Faulkner and Brie Gynclid, the authors of this CIB, also do the CIB for Photoshop which has featured some of our work for the past three editions. We have never met either of them and the reviews we have written of their other works have not always been all laced with rose petals. In the spirit of full disclosure, we are not paid to write reviews nor have we ever met anyone who does that kind of thing.
Chapter 1 - The Workflow
There was a time when if you were new to all things Adobe, the After Effects UI (user interface) was easily intimidating. Now that most Ae users come into the app with a CC subscription, it may not be all that foreign anymore, since it shares a UI experience with other CC apps. This is a good thing since the book doesn't seem to gently ramp-up for the inexperienced reader. We understand this. Many new Ae users are those who have jumped ship from apps like Apple's Final Cut Pro (FCP) or those with CC subscriptions, for which they have already gathered some significant CC experiences. So, overburdening the CIB reader with things they already understand makes no sense.
If you are new to Ae, there's nothing to concern yourself with about this book's step-by-step lessons, complete with inspirational assets for use while studying them. Don't rush through the lessons. Take it slow. Find time for plenty of breaks. If you try to just do the lessons, getting from Point A to Point B, page after page, the learning won't sink in. Continually ask yourself, "Do I fully understand all of what I just studied?" If not, go back and revisit it.
The following is a checklist for this chapter. When you complete the chapter, go back to this list and ask yourself, "Have I mastered each of these?" Don't think in terms of just getting through the lessons. Instead, do these with the mindset that once you close the book, you will be able to successfully complete projects, with these same features, on your own. We find the best way to do this is to create some self-directed revisiting to these projects. Approach this by inventing your own projects.
Work Area 8
Getting Started 9
Create a Project + Import Footage 9-13
Create a Composition + Arrange Layers 13-17
Layers 16
Tools Panel 17
Add Effects + Modify Layer Properties 17-24
Prepare the Layers 17-18
Add a Radial Blur Effect 18-21
Add an Exposure Effect 21-22
Transform Layer Properties 22-24
Animate the Composition 24-31
Prepare the Text Composition 24-26
Timeline Panel 25
Animate Text w/Animation Presets 27-29
Timecode + Duration 28
Change Preset Settings in Effect Controls Panel 29-31
Preview Project 31-33
Standard Preview 31-32
RAM Preview 32-33
Optimize Performance 33
Render + Export a Composition 33
Customize Workspaces 34-35
Predefined Workspaces 34-35
Save a Customi Workspace 35
Control UI Brightness 35-36
After Effects Resources 36
The book suggests that it will take you an hour to complete this first chapter. If you are new to Ae, do not concern yourself if it has taken you twice that long.
This chapter has had some nice improvements since the previous edition.
For some CIBs, it takes a few chapters until you can feel as if you have taken control of the app. In this case, you feel as if you have gotten somewhere by the middle of page 32. That gives the reader a wonderful sense of empowerment.
Chapter 2 - Basic Animation Using Effects + Presets
We write these journals as we work through the lessons, comparing this CIB edition with the previous one. Two chapters into this, we are impressed with the nice changes which have been made.
This chapter is well-designed and developed as a smooth transition from understanding the fundamentals of the workspace, in the previous chapter, to animation basics with Ae. After about an hour, the readers should feel more comfortable in their abilities to accomplish great work in After Effects.
It's a chapter which should feel empowering to those coming into Ae from Bridge (Br) and Illustrator (Ai). This CIB jumps right into the role that those CC apps play in the overall picture of how Ae integrates into the complete Creative Cloud set of powerful tools. The more you learn about Ae, the more you'll see the app not only as an extensive team player with the other CC apps, but you'll see how you can use those applications in creating masterful After Effects projects, all the better.
It is possible to do things exclusively in After Effects. There are many well accomplished After Effects artists in the business. If you bring your Flash Professional, Illustrator, Photoshop, and Premiere Pro skills into Ae, you'll be all the more productive.
Getting Started 40
Import Footage w/Bridge 41-42
Create a New Composition 43-45
Import the Foreground Element 44-45
Imported Illustrator Layers 46-47
Apply Effects to a Layer 47-49
Apply + Control Effects 48
Apply an Animation Preset 50-52
Precompose Layers for a New Animation 51-52
Preview Effects 52
Add Transparency 53
Render the Composition 54-56
Beyond the hour this book suggests, that you'll need to complete these lessons, we'd suggest you double that and bring in some of your own Illustrator projects and just play around with them.
Chapter 3 - Text Animation
As mentioned in the introduction, broadcast news can be seen as a daily gallery of Ae projects. Motion text graphics are a means of keeping the audience engaged. Once again, the author has wisely chosen to integrate Photoshop (Ps) text into the lessons. The pros and cons of bringing Ps text into Ae is a frequently discussed topic by some of the best of the best among Ae users. We are pleased that this CIB prepares the reader for the normal Ae workflow that After Effects masters use every day, worldwide.
This is a fun chapter. The exercises pertain to other animating projects, so don't think of these lessons as text-specific.
Getting Started 60-62
Import Footage 60-61
Create the Composition 62
Text Layers 62
Install a Font Using Typekit 62-65
Create + Format Point Text 65-67
Character Panel 65
Paragraph Panel 66
Position Type 66-67
Text Animation Preset 67-70
Browse Animations Preset 68
Preview a Range of Frames 68-69
Customize an Animation Preset 69-70
Animate w/Scale Keyframes 70-72
Preview a Scale Animation 71
Add Easy Ease 71-72
Animate w/Parenting 72-73
Parent + Child Layers 73
Animate Imported Photoshop Text 74-77
Import Text 74
Edit Imported Text 75-76
Animate a Subtitle 76-77
Animate Text w/Path Animation Preset 77-79
Customize a Preset Path 78-79
Animate Type Tracking 80-81
Customize Placeholder Text 80
Apply a Tracking Preset 80
Customize the Tracking Animation Preset 81
Animate Text Opacity 82
Text Animator Group 82-86
Text Animator Groups 83
Skew the Range of Text 84-86
Clean Up Path Animation 86-87
Animate a Non-Text Layer Along a Motion Path 88-90
Copy the Mask Shape 88-89
Orient the Object 89
Coordinate the Text + Object Timing 89-90
Add Motion Blur 90
This is a very full chapter. If you're familiar with some of it, completing this in 2 hours is feasible. If you're new, it could be a half day project. Dig deep and master it all.
Chapter 4 - Working with Shape Layers
This chapter's previously odd lesson assets have been completely revised into pleasant, approachable exercises which are easy for the reader to approach, understand, and successfully complete. We especially appreciate the addition of 3D.
If you are more of someone who takes digital assets and places them in motion, as opposed to drawing new ones, from scratch, this chapter was created for you. Some of the key goals with chapter 4 is assisting you to work as efficiently as possible in After Effects. These are similar to skills to what allows Adobe Illustrator artists to complete tasks quickly. So, if you are to achieve your goals with this chapter, you need to be able to quickly draw shapes, duplicate them, make modifications, etc. You'll want to complete the extra credit project on page 114. Next, work some more shape projects of your own until you feel comfortable with the process.
Getting Started 94-95
Create the Composition 94-95
Add a Shape Layer 95-100
Draw a Shape 95
Apply a Fill + Stroke 96
Twist a Shape 97-100
Create Custom Shapes 100-101
Draw a Shape w/the Pen Tool 100-101
Create a Self-Animating Shape 101
Duplicate Shapes 102-105
Brainstorm to Experiment 105-106
Position Layers w/Snapping 106-109
Create a New Composition 106-108
Snap Layers into Position 108-109
Add Compositions to a 3D Project 109-113
Animate Layers to Match Audio 114
Chapter 5 - Animate a Multimedia Presentation
The chapter has been around for a while and, admittedly, there's something about the lesson assets that we have never liked. CIB is known as having inspirational exercises. They generally make you feel like you're upgraded to professional class, but this one is not as polished as we feel it should be. However, isn't it fair to ask, "Does it work?" and the answer is, "Yes. It teaches you how to create an animation for a multimedia presentation." But it's okay to also ask, "Do plenty of Ae users do multimedia presentations?" We have never met any. So, for the most part, put the multimedia thing out of your mind and concentrate on the techniques which this chapter teaches. Most of them can be applied to many After Effects animating projects.
Animation is one of the most powerful toolsets in Ae. A good example is keyframing, where you choose important places in the timeline and allow the app to handle the transitions between them, for you. That's common to Premiere Pro (Pr), Flash Professional (Fl), and Photoshop (Ps).
However, if you have not been working with those features in Fl, Ps, and Pr, and this is the first time you are keyframing, it could take a little while for you to fully grasp what it's all about. So, do not allow yourself to become frustrated. If you feel the need to go back a few pages, or start over, that's completely normal, and the best way to proceed with this learning.
The chapter has some very empowering exercises including motion blur, Easy Ease, and the addition of an audio track which integrates Adobe Audition.
Getting Started 118-119
Animate the Scenery w/Parenting 119-123
Set Up Parenting 119-120
Animate the Parent Layer 120-121
Animate a Position 121
Trim a Layer 122
Apply Motion Blur 122
Preview the Animation 122-123
Adjust an Anchor Point 123-124
Mask Video w/Vector Shapes 124-128
Create a New Composition 125-126
Animate Presets w/Shape Layers 126
Constrain a Layer w/an Alpha Matte 126-127
Swap a Composition into a Layer 127-128
Keyframe a Motion Path 128-131
Keyframe Scale + Rotation Transformations 129-131
Add Motion Blur 131
Preview 131
Animate Addition Elements 131-134
Animate a Project's Passing Traffic 131-132
Animate a Project's Buildings 132-133
Add Easy Ease 133
Copy the Project's Animation 134
Apply an Effect 135-138
Add a Solid Color Layer 135-136
Solid-Color Layers Overview 135
Apply an Effect 137-138
Create an Animated Slide Show 138-142
Import Slides 138-139
Make a New Composition 139-140
Position the Slide Show 140-141
Fade-in the First Slide 142
Supported Audio Formats 142
Adobe Sound Document 142
Advanced Audio Coding 142
Audio Exchange File Format 142
Moving Picture Experts Group 142
Video for Windows 142
Waveform 142
Add an Audio Track 143-144
Loop the Audio Track 143-144
Zoom in for a Close-up 144-145
Preview the Entire Composition 144-145
Edit Audio Files w/Audition 146
Chapter 6 - Animate Layers
This chapter opens with Photoshop (Ps) layering techniques which impresses us as to how Ae trainees, coming from a Ps background, can feel right at home, right away. We also don't know how many Adobe GoLive users (Adobe's go-to web design app prior to the Macromedia Dreamweaver acquisition) are out there, who are just coming into Ae, but on page 156, they'll say "Pick Whip!" These are good examples of how the CIB transitions the users of other Adobe apps into Ae.
Most of the chapter is based on that previously mentioned Ps image. For the more seasoned After Effects user, this might seem a little too fundamental. But, hang in there. For newbies this just temporarily lowers the steepness of the learning curve. By page 162 you'll transition into an exercise on track mattes and traveling mattes. These have been at the core of Hollywood postproduction, going back decades. However, if you are new to all of it, you may as well have awakened in a foreign land, where you don't speak the language, and have no idea how you got there. Fortunately, Ae CC 2014 has a new more simple UI which makes it easier to navigate. Carefully study and bookmark page 163 as a reference source on these mattes.
Adding motion blur and shadow movement is very cool and gives you the feeling that you're getting somewhere with Ae. The lens flare exercise makes you feel like you've learned a technique you have seen done many times and always wondered how that was possible.
Retiming a composition and the remapping with the Graph Editor will also seem foreign to some readers and but is quite familiar to Premiere Pro and Flash Professional users. If you are not among the latter, take a break before page 172.
Getting Started 150-153
Import Footage 151-152
Prepare Layered Photoshop Files 152
Create the Composition 152-153
Photoshop Layer Files Overview 153
Simulating Light Changes 154-156
Expressions 156
Duplicate an Animation w/the Pick Whip 156-157
Animate Movement in Scenery 158-161
Animate a Project's Sun 158-159
Animate a Project's Birds 159-160
Animate a Project's Clouds 160-161
Preview the Project's Animation 161
Adjust Layers + Create a Track Matte 162-165
Precompose Layers 162
Create Track Mattes 163-164
Track + Travel Mattes Overview 163
Add Motion Blur 164-165
Animate Shadows 166-168
Add a Lens Flare Effect 168-169
Animate a Project's Clock 170-172
Render the Animation 171-172
Retime the Composition 172-179
View Time Remapping in the Graphic Editor 174-175
The Graphic Editor to Remap Time 175-177
Add an Easy Ease Out 177
Scale the Animation in Time 177-178
Chapter 7 - Masks
Masking is familiar territory for many CC apps. These exercises are well-planned and make it easy, even for beginners, using the familiar pen tool. Page 185 is another one of those places which need a bookmark. There's a good graphic there on mask modes.
This is another lesson which is not as sexy as other CIBs offer. It's practical. However, we'd rather have readers working on a more exciting pro-level project.
Masks 182
Getting Started 182-183
Create a Composition 183
Create a Mask w/the Pen Tool 183-184
Edit a Mask 184-188
Invert a Mask 184-185
Mask Modes 185
Create Curved Masks 186-187
Break Direction Handles 187-188
Create a Bezier Mask 188
Feather Mask Edges 188-189
Replace the Content of a Mask 189-192
Reposition + Resize a Project's Clip 190-191
Rotate a Clip 191-192
Add a Reflection 192-196
Apply a Blend Mode 195
Create a Vignette 196-197
Rectangle + Ellipse Tools 197
Mask Creation 198
Chapter 8 - Distorting Objects w/the Puppet Tools
The Ae Puppet tools are something of an After Effects muscle car. An entire book could be written about them. In some postproduction circles, the cooler stuff you can do with Puppet tools, the higher your credibility climbs.
Photoshop borrowed the After Effects puppet tools a few cycles back. If you're used to puppet warping and pinning from Ps, you'll feel like you've already done these exercises.
However, if you a newbie, this should be a fun chapter.
Getting Started 202-205
Import Footage 202-203
Create a Composition 203
Add a Background 204
Scale an Object 204-205
Add a Character 205
Puppet Tools 206
Add Deform Pins 206-208
Define Areas of Overlap 208-209
Stiffen an Area 209
Animate Pin Positions 210-213
Create a Walking Cycle 210-211
Squash + Stretch 210
Animate a Slip 212
Move an Object 212-213
Record Animation 214
That said, a CIB can only allocate enough space for you to become acquainted with the basic feature set. And, yes, you can complete in around an hour.
You have to ask yourself, "Do I want to become a great After Effects artist?" If so, start dreaming up other puppet tool projects you can do on your own.
Chapter 9 - Roto Brush Tool
When Ae introduced the Roto Brush tool, they changed the game of Hollywood postproduction, forever. The ability to quickly identify one object (such as a face) in one frame of a clip, make adjustments to it, just as you would in Photoshop, and then watch it be applied to every single frame, as the object moves, is mesmerizing. For decades, artists tediously altered one frame at a time, laboring inside big machines. Traditional rotoscope work might make more than one day to do a second of finished footage.
This is where you put to use your previous learning about mattes. This chapter should make you feel like you're equipped to get into the big leagues. It should allow you to feel accomplished. However, that would be in your abilities alone. This is another case where you deserve to be working on examples which feel like they're from a Hollywood feature film. Instead the project seems like it's from someone's home movies.
Rotoscoping Overview 218
Getting Started 218-220
Create the Composition 219
After Effects w/Premiere Pro 220
Create a Segmentation Boundary 220-227
Create a Base Frame 220-223
Refine the Boundary Across the Initial Open 224-225
Add New Base Frames 225-227
Fine-Tune the Matte 227-229
Adjust the Roto Brush + Refine Edge Effect 227-228
Refine Edge Tool 228-229
Refine Soft + Hard Matte Effects 229
Freeze Roto Brush Tool Results 229-230
Change the Background 231-232
Add Animated Text 232-234
Output the Project 234
Chapter 10 - Color Correction
There's something important to understand about the role of this chapter in your overall After Effects learning. As previously mentioned, one of the many purposes of CIB is to act as a workbook to prepare you for taking the ACE exam in Ae.
There was a time when Ae was Adobe's best shot at color correction. Adobe acquired the renown giant for feature film colorists, SpeedGrade. Once that app became part of the Adobe family of products, which now bear the "CC" brand, they made it even better.
There's a fabulous CIB just for SpeedGrade CC.
So, a fair question is, "Do I really need this chapter?"
We have learned that there are many After Effects and Premiere Pro users who never work in SpeedGrade. The color correction tools in Ae are all they need, or at least, all they care to learn. This one is well-crafted to acquaint you with some not-so-simple technology. It does so with some more of those home movie-like lesson assets, which fail to excite us.
Chapter 11 - 3D Features
After Effects has had a nice 3D feature set, for many cycles, but Adobe really turned up the heat when they brought Cinema 4D (C4D) into the equation. C4D has long been Hollywood's gold standard for 3D animation. What you get, with Ae, is the Lite version. But for most Ae artists, it's all they'll ever need.
This is the most intense chapter some readers will have encountered, so far in this educational project. The concepts needed to navigate 3D lights is not simple nor are those involved in working with a virtual camera. On the latter point, you'll want to be sure you master the camera metaphor, in this chapter, before moving forward.
The exercises in this chapter are of the high calibre we feel the entire book deserves. It feels as if it's closer to the kind of projects you would expect an Ae artist to work with. Therefore, upon successful completion, you say to yourself, "Let's do more!"
Chapter 12 - 3D Camera Tracker
You may not know it, but you have seen Ae's 3D Camera Tracker on TV a zillion times. It's in those commercials where everything freezes and then the camera pans over a crowd and the objects in the crowd take on three-dimensions qualities, in frozen layers.
Admittedly, that's a very complex project. However, this chapter opens the door to enter that world of the kind of high-level coolness may budding Adobe professionals crave.
This chapter is easier to understand if you have some background in still photography. However, the entire chapter doesn't push the reader. The lessons assume no level of photographic expertise. Yet, it's not a free pass to anyone. This chapter is challenging, as well it should be.
It digs into some other Ae tools, as well, such as repairing issues with camera shutter distortion and rendering a project. Both of these just touch on the related technology.
Chapter 13 - Advanced Editing Techniques
Warp Stabilizer is another marquee aspect of Ae. It sounds like something out of a "Star Wars" episode, but that's only because it is from that genre of motion graphics.
If you are approaching this book in a cafeteria-like manner, picking and choosing the chapters you want to study, this one might throw you off course and you'll need to roll back and revisit a few chapters.
It furthers what was covered in the previous two chapters, getting into challenging motion tracking. Attention is focused on many of Ae's signature effects. As the book begins to wrap-up, the reader is being primed for where to go from here.
That's not to say that there isn't any hand holding. Page 319 tries to guide you through what could be a foreign term, Bicubic Scaling. There's a similar bookmark page at 323 about the Warp Stabilizer VFX settings. We applaud the foresight this book has in making the learning process as smooth as possible. A must-mark is page 328 on moving and resizing track points.
If just reading this makes you think, "Whoa!" Don't worry, you'll be fine, if you've gotten this far.
Chapter 14 - Rendering + Output
As with many of the huge CC apps, the people at Adobe/ Peachpit Press save the last chapter of the CIBs for the not so sexy, but absolutely essential understanding of how professionals bring a project to conclusion. This is nothing you want to gloss-over, after days of study, just to falsely say you have crossed the CIB finish line. If anything, take a break before starting Chapter 14. It delves into Adobe Media Encoder (AME), known to many as just "Media Encoder" or ME.
Some of the world's best technology writers have contacted us from Adobe press previews asking us to help them decode Media Encoder. That's not an easy one. ME is something akin to all the PDF export options in InDesign. It's also like Adobe's expectation that you'll understand all of Adobe Camera Raw's save options. That requires a huge comprehension of media technology, spanning decades. Nevertheless, fully knowing what each one of those requires is enough know-how to fill a not very exciting book, we appreciate how much of the groundwork was fit into this chapter. It's a substantial down payment. And, it's been updated with some of the new UI directions the AME team has fit into the current version.
All of this is covered in greater depth in the CIB for Premiere Pro CC 2014, which we highly recommend.
That said, some Ae artists never do output from Ae. Their work gets poured into Premiere Pro, where the output takes place. So, it's possible that some readers will have no need for this chapter and can call in quits after chapter 13's very cool exploration into particle simulation, high dynamic range footage, and time warping effects, the stuff Ae artists are made of.
Conclusion
There are some fabulous books available about After Effects. We have quite a library of them, as we try to constantly up our game on mastering Ae, no small task. If someone is new to After Effects, with nothing else in their Ae library, this CIB is their best choice. Other books are great for mastering the app. However, this book does a fabulous job of assuming that you know absolutely nothing about Ae. Yet it has done a good job of providing you with the most valuable single resource available to prepare you for becoming an Adobe Certified Expert in After Effects. We know of no other Ae home-study opportunity which is as complete as this.
Is it the ultimate?
No.
Some of the working assets feel a little old, as if the author understands the technology of Ae, but can't come up with anything truly exciting. That's where the other After Effects books are more stimulating. Does it provide the much needed resources to make a very complex app extremely approachable?
That's a solid "Yes!", without a doubt.
In our minds, this scores maybe 4.7 out of 5 stars. It could be better, but at this point, it's the best. "Adobe After Effects CC 2014 Classroom in a Book" gets our endorsement. We have our hopes set high for an even better Ae CC 2015 edition. We're anxious to see it jump to a solid 5 stars.
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
I threw away good money and now I'm stuck with it
By Jed Smith
The Kindle download version has no way to download lessons. DO NOT BUY this if you are putting it on Kindle, iPad, etc. I threw away good money and now I'm stuck with it!!
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