After Effects Effects and Effect Controls

Apply effects to layers, adjust them in the Effect Controls panel, and understand how effects stack and process. Here’s how to do it in After Effects on macOS, step by step — part of the free After Effects beginner curriculum.

Lesson 4 of the After Effects curriculum. Before this: Keyframing and Animation. Next up: Masks and Shape Layers.

What you’ll do

• Open the Effects & Presets panel on the right side of the interface; use its search field to find effects by name
• Drag an effect (e.g., Gaussian Blur from the Blur & Sharpen category) onto a layer in the Timeline or Composition panel
• Open the Effect Controls panel (Cmd+Shift+T or click the Effect Controls tab that appears tabbed with the Project panel on the upper left) to adjust the effect’s parameters
• Understand that effects on a layer process in order top to bottom — reorder them by dragging in the Effect Controls panel
• Apply Levels (Color Correction > Levels) to adjust the brightness and contrast of a layer
• Apply Glow (Stylize > Glow) and adjust Glow Threshold, Glow Radius, and Glow Intensity
• Apply an effect to an Adjustment layer and observe that it affects all layers below it
• Disable a single effect by clicking the fx button (the “f” icon) to the left of its name in the Effect Controls panel, without deleting it
• Browse and apply an Animation Preset from the Effects & Presets panel (Presets folder) for a quick starting point

Do it hands-free with Skilly

Reading steps is one thing; doing them while the menus are in front of you is another. Skilly is a voice-first tutor for macOS: you ask out loud — “where’s the effects panel?” — and it answers while moving your cursor to the exact button, watching your actual After Effects window. It’s the same After Effects curriculum these lessons come from, taught live instead of read. Free to start.

Keep going

This is one stage of the full After Effects beginner curriculum. Previous: Keyframing and Animation. Continue with Masks and Shape Layers.