Gutterfish wrote thelor wrote Hi guys. Maybe I'm the stupidest person on the planet. Or maybe AE is monkey butt for not letting the simplest of tasks be... simple. First: A little rant of my own... Obviously you're not the dumbest person on the planet but it's curious that you assume the task you cannot complete is "the simplest of tasks". I mean, how would YOU know? This type of comment often baffles me. It's understandable that you would not know how to do something you've never done before in software you've hardly used but given those facts, how could YOU accurately judge how simple or complicated a given task "should" be? So weird how often people seem to know exactly how easy or hard something they have no idea how to do should be. Now....on to the task of trying to "empty your cup" of how you KNOW things should be so it might be filled with how things ARE. The simple answer is that apart from After Effect's many shortcomings, It's just NOT a painting program and as a result painting in it is clunky & not very intuitive. My suggestion to you would be to open Photoshop, or Illustrator or, if you don;t have a CC subscription, any free painting program and paint you arrow there. You could also create your arrow as a shape layer using the pen tool but maybe you want that "painted" look. Finally as for your frustration with the .png file you imported showing as a "black box". That for sure is not AE's fault. AE can display .png files just fine. So the problem is probably with the specific .png file your using. thelor wrote I don't think people were meant to sit in front of a computer screen for three hours trying (and failing!) to paint arrows. Huh? What DO you think people were meant to do, open a piece of professional industry software and be able to paint an arrow? Based on what experience are you making that assumption? My final suggestion to you is press your reset button & try again. Your baseless assumptions & expectations about how easy your experience is "supposed" to be is getting in your way. Seriously.... Here's the thing: I understand what you're trying to say and there are some valid points here but there are also some valid counterpoints. Obviously each software has its uses, and even among softwares with the same basic function there can be differences. But there are also certain constants. I'll use a stupid example: finding the calculator on your phone. No matter whether you have an android or an iphone or a blackberry or a windows phone, the calculator app is going to be on the home page by default. And when you open it, it will have the same exact functions. Video editing software is obviously more complex than a simple arithmetic calculator, yes, but you gotta admit: the brush tool is right there on the toolbar. It's impossible to miss. Whereas when it comes to actually using the brush tool... I had to come on the forums and waste you good people's valuable time. Moreover, even a beginner can understand to some degree how easy or hard to use a particular software is. Especially someone like me who is usually only using the most basic of features. (this is why I use open source GIMP even though I know it is inferior to Photoshop in a multitude of ways). Sony Vegas for me was always very streamlined and straightforward and GED friendly even when I first started using it. (simply because I had some very very very little experience with final cut before that). You can compare it to language. If you're native language is Mandarin Chinese, then learning Spanish, for example is going to be very difficult and your knowledge of Mandarin will give you almost nothing in terms of groundwork for learning Spanish. But if you are a native French or Italian speaker? It's a different story entirely. I understand each video editing software is a different language, but it should at least be the same language group, that's all I'm saying.
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