After Effects Keyboard Shortcuts Every Motion Designer Should Know
- by Kenan Bateman
- in After Effects & Motion Design Blog Creative Professional Advice
- posted May 30, 2018
Layer Properties
P – Toggle position property
A – Toggle anchor point property
T – Toggle opacity property (think “opaci-T”)
R – Toggle rotation property
S – Toggle scale property
U – Toggle open all keyframed properties on layer
U + U – Toggle open all properties on layer
⌘ + A – Select all layers
⌘ + ↑ or ↓ – Move up or down one layer in layer list
[ or ] – Move selected layer’s beginning or end point to current time code
Tool Shortcuts
V – Selection tool (return to pointer curser)
⌘ + T – Text tool
H – Hand tool (drag the canvas around)
G – Pen tool (draw a shape or mask on screen)
Zooming
⌘ + + or - – Zoom in or out in the video preview window
+ or - – Zoom in or out in the timeline
Work Area / Previewing
B or N – Set work area Beginning or End point
⌘ + 0 – Preview the selected work area’s video and audio (this is a zero, not an “O”)
. – Preview audio only (This is the number keypad dot. For those of you working on a laptop, I suggest reconfiguring your keyboard shortcut to make it ⌘ + . so you can quickly audio preview in the same way as RAM video previewing)
Shift + Number Key (0-9) – Add a timeline marker (Double click the marker and change the comment to rename it from a number to a specific note)
CNTRL + 8 – Add a layer timeline marker (Double click the marker to add a note on the layer)
Exporting
⌘ + CNTRL + M – Send selection to Render Queue inside After Effects (export video)
⌘ + ALT + M – Send selection to Media Encoder Queue (export video) – this is a better way to export unless you need to export with transparency or lossless.