So in my intro animation tutorial, I had demonstrated how I created this 3D mouse pointer natively in 3D without any additional plug-ins. Here’s a dedicated tutorial about that. It’s actually a pretty simple process. Just import a cursor graphic, get the pen tool, and ‘trace’ the shape of the cursor. Set it to 3D and give it some depth (Geometry Options – Extrusion Depth). Now set the ‘Reflection Intensity’ in the material options to 100. That’s it! To follow along watch the video above. You can download the free project file here: DOWNLOAD The post Mouse Pointer 3D in After Effects [FREE TEM ..read more

The Double Exposure Effect is pretty easy to create in Photoshop. Usually, you would combine 2 images together. In this case, we are going to use a side portrait and an image from New York. First, desaturate the portrait because we are going to need a black & white image and this works best when the portrait is desaturated. You could do that with an adjustment layer or in the menu under ‘Image -> Adjustment -> Desaturate‘. Combine both images and set masks Now add the second image to our profile image and place it on top. To help find the right position just decrease the opacity and ..read more

To create the halftone effect in Photoshop first duplicate your image and desaturate it. With the duplicated layer selected go to ‘Image – Adjustment – Desaturate‘. You could as well use an adjustment layer but we know we are going to stay on a black & white layer so this is a quick method to desaturate a layer. the main step to create the halftone effect is using the according filter under ‘Filter – Pixelate – Color Halftone…‘. In the popup there are a couple of settings you need to tweak to create the desire effect. These settings depend on the resolution of your base image but the foll ..read more

To remove moving objects in After Effects just create a mask around the object you want to remove. In the tutorial above that was a car that I want to remove from the street. With the clip selected and the rectangle tool just drag a mask around the object. Set the mode of the mask to ‘None‘ so you can see what’s going on. In our case here we want to make sure there is enough room around the car so it also captures the shadow of the moving object. Otherwise, it would be visible later and you would not get a perfect result. Also, you don’t want the mask to intersect with other details in the sh ..read more

There are a lot of ways to create animated arrows in After Effects. Some tutorials might even suggest using the pick whip and expressions and all. But it’s actually really easy to create with just 2 clicks and in this tutorial, you will learn how. First, select the pen tool and start drawing your path on the canvas. Make sure the fill is set to transparent and the stroke is set to opaque so you can actually see the path you are drawing. You can always go in and tweak the path so it’s nice and round. Now go to this newly created shape layer in your timeline and twirl open the little triangle ..read more

One of the most common things to do in Adobe After Effects is Motion Tracking. Now there are multiple techniques to do this and many different scenarios where you would want to apply those techniques. We are going to look at the easiest and quickest way to do Motion Tracking in After Effects. First, drag your clip to the timeline to create a composition. Now with the clip selected head over to the ‘Tracker‘ panel. If you don’t see this panel just activate it via ‘Animation -> Track Motion‘. This will add a little tracker icon to the canvas. You can resize the tracker to cover a bigger area ..read more

How to create the Parallax 2.5D Animation in Photoshop: 1. Create a selection around your foreground object with the path tool 2. Convert that path into a selection with 0,5 pixels feathering 3. Copy that selection to a new layer 4. expand the selection by 15 pixels 5. apply a ‘content-aware fill’ to the background layer within that selection 6. Now open the timeline and create a ‘video timeline’ 7. Make sure both layers are converted to smart objects 8. Now animate the ‘transform’ value (position and scaling) to your liking 9. When done export the animation as a video from the lower left co ..read more

Here’s a quick and very handy trick to achieve the selective color effect in Premiere Pro. For selective color, you can of course use the usual techniques with secondary masks and all. But the purpose of this technique is to achieve this look very quickly with just a few clicks. Lumetri Panel – everything in one place For this, we are going to use the ‘Lumetri Color‘ panel. Within this panel head over to the ‘Curves‘ tab. And here you will see a whole bunch of sub-tabs. We are going to use the ‘Hue Saturation Curves‘ tab. And within this tab the topmost panel ‘Hue vs. Sat‘. With the eyedroppe ..read more

Finally, I have this new stretch text animation free template for you to use in After Effects. It’s a small and simple one. But a free template nonetheless. You’ve probably seen this stretch text animation many times before. Usually, you convert the text to paths and animate the anchor points around. But in this case, I used the ‘CC Scale Wipe‘ effect to create something similar. This way the text remains editable. Which means, you can just download this project file and use it for your projects (link below). Creating this is actually pretty simple. Just type your text on the canvas and cente ..read more

How To create the reactive audio spectrum effect in After Effects: 1. Create a solid 2. Apply a mask to the solid and set it to ‘none‘ 3. apply the ‘Audio Spectrum‘ effect to the solid 4. Set ‘Audio Layer‘ to the desired audio file in your comp. 5. Set ‘Path‘ to the mask you just created 6. Adjust settings like ‘Frequency‘ and ‘Maximum Height‘ to your liking In order to create this audio spectrum effect you first need an audio file. So go ahead and import that into After Effects and drop it into your composition. Create a solid & mask to hold the effect Next, we are going to create a so ..read more