New in Beta: Tip of the Day

[David.Arbor]

Hello explorers of motion design and visual effects knowledge! 

The After Effects team is excited to introduce a brand-new take on a much-loved past feature—Tip of the Day! 

This feature was brought to life in collaboration with you, our users! We asked the community to share their favorite workflow tips and time-saving tricks so everyone can level up a bit. Starting in After Effects Beta version 25.6.17, these glorious gems of information can be found in the Composition, Footage, and Layer panels. We’ve curated this list of more than 100 tips to help users of all skill levels; and we guarantee that if you read them regularly, you will learn something. A sincere thank you to everyone who submitted tips. If you were one of those folks, you might even see your name front and center in AE! 

Worry not, these tips will never get in the way of your workflow, you’ll only see them when the relevant panels are empty. They’re also OS-aware, so tips containing keyboard shortcuts will show the proper modifiers for macOS and Windows. If you use AE in a language other than English, we got you! These tips have been translated into each of our supported languages.  

 

Each time the Composition, Footage, or Layer panels are reloaded, you’ll see a randomly selected tip. For example:   

Open AE to a blank project. Boom, learn about scrubbing color swatches in the Timeline to adjust hue or saturation. 
Pop open that empty Footage panel: Boom, you just learned how to instantly move between connected comps while barely lifting a finger.  

Close all your Timelines to show an empty Comp panel: Boom, now you know we added a new command to create Null controllers for any Positional Points.  

We’re also accepting submissions for our next round of tips, so if you’d like to contribute your info nugget, please fill out this form!  

Please give this new functionality a try and let us know what you think about the implementation, content, or translation of any of the tips. 

For anyone curious about the full tips referenced above: 

You can click and scrub any color chip/swatch in the Timeline to cycle between different hues. If you scrub up or down, you can control the saturation. 
-Eran Stern 

To quickly move from your main Comp to a Pre-comp or vice-versa, hit "Tab" to use the Mini Flowchart. 
-Denis Karpovich 

Quickly create a new Null control for any keyframable point in a layer, effect, Shape, or Puppet Pin. Select “Layer > Create > Null Controllers for Positional Points” or right-click a layer and go to “Create > Keyframe Assistant.” 
-John Colombo 

[QuietRobot]

I like it! seeing the tip of the first image ... have you thought about adding the option to lock the dimensions of a panel?
that would be great! 🙏 @David.Arbor 

(old suggestion)

[simon0815]

jey. How often do I have to open the Beta now to catch my Tipp? 😄

(could be more random at the three places. Often the same tipp at all three places) Yes, I started Ae about 20 times now...

[VictoriaNece]

Thank you for submitting a tip! You don't need to restart AE. You can just open and close the blank comp window (e.g. create and close a comp) to see a new tip. It's random, though, which one will show up. 

[Shebbe]

Will we have an option to disable tips as well? Photoshop finally made options to supress tips and other distractions, now it feels like AE is starting them.

[jenkmeister]

Coachmarks, the ones that pop up, can be turned off from the Preferences in general (Enable Coach Marks). These tips of the day are supposed to be non-obtrusive and just show in blank panels, so hopefully you'll enjoy them and won't want to get rid of them 🙂 

[Shebbe]

Respectfully I do. I do not want software to treat me like an amateur that constantly needs assistance or tips. It's distracting and unprofessional, even in the way it's implemented now.