Known Participant

Question

Welcome to Keyframe Color Labels in AE!

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
May 6, 2022
19 replies
28910 views

We are very happy to bring a new feature to the Beta. As of today’s build (22.5.0 Build 18) you can now color your keyframes with one of AE's label colors. This has been a huge customer request, and we know users that saw the sneak-peek at MAX have been anxious to get their hands on it.

Right-click on any keyframe(s), select ‘Label’, and choose the color you want assigned. You will also notice an option to ‘Select Label Group’, where you can use that color label as the basis for a selection. We have a few more features coming very soon, including scripting hooks and additional selection options. So stay tuned…

The new color labels led us to realize we needed a better keyframe selection UI. We wanted to allow you to see the label colors even while selected, and to make sure the selection didn’t disappear if that label was blue. This release includes the new selection UI that we would like you to experiment with. To show the difference, in the example images below I want to select the yellow keyframes, which sit next to the blue ones:

Give it a spin for a few days and let us know what you think. As mentioned above, we will have a few updates coming quickly so you can dig in even further.

Enjoy!

Feature request

H

Hse-Di26116266dgl0

Participant

How can I get the selected Keyframe blue as it always have been (Current Selection) ?

The New Selection is a pain to the eye and It can be a loss of time to assign specific color to keyframe.

If I can't get the standard selection, please stop make features that we are forced to use, I am very displeased.

TimKurkoski

Community Manager

Hi @Hse-Di26116266dgl0 ,

There is no option to disable the new keyframe selection highlight.

While designing the new keyframe color labels, we realized that there was an obvious conflict between adding color overlays to keyframes and the existing keyframe selection highlight which was itself a color overlay. Thus, a new model for indicating selected keyframes was a requirement.

We went through many design iterations for the highlight before landing on the outline, and once released into After Effects Beta in mid-2022, we took feedback on their appearance and made refinements before keyframe color labels and the new selection highlight were released in After Effects 22.6.

H

Hse-Di26116266dgl0

Participant

I have been paying monthly for Adobe. So please, give us the possibility to disable this feature, the blue outline adds too much informations to watch on a timeline (it's like if you were using a outline on selected clips on Premiere, this isn't a good idea. I don't recall that selection higlight on software works with outline on any software, and there must have been a good reason for that. )

The usual selected blue keyframe we have for years was perfectly fine. This isn't respectful to force us to use news features especially when not everyone can be pleased with it. I find this regressive, so please, allow us the possibility to disable keyframe labelling color. I am staying on an older After Effect version as long as possible until there is a solution.

Christine GoldbyAuthor

Known Participant

Hello everyone! We are very happy to announce that Keyframe Color Labels has shipped this week with 22.6.

Thank you for all of your feedback and help in making this a solid feature!

the_dudes

Inspiring

That is great news indeed, and the usability for scripting is a nice cherry on top. I'd like to give the following critzism: The outline is really bold. It's quite unusual, and doesn't match the rest of the UI at all. Is there any chance for you to make it stand out just a little bit less, like with half the strength?

TimKurkoski

Community Manager

@the_dudes The thickness of the keyframe selection highlight is meant to be unobtrusive, but we've found that when display scaling is enabled it will increase thickness overall to the proportionality of the keyframe's pixel size. This is an issue I've raised with our design team. More detail in my post here:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-discussions/after-effects-22-6-is-now-live/m-p/13185430#M210331

H

Hossam Hassan Sakr

Participating Frequently

Nice update!! thanks

V

Valter Igor5FC7

Participant

where can I download this version of AE?

I have updated my ae and now is 22.5(build 53) but I don' t find the keyframe label options.

thank you

TimKurkoski

Community Manager

Hi @Valter Igor5FC7 !

As noted in the name of this forum, this feature is currently in After Effects Beta. The current build of After Effects Beta is 22.6 x21, although the Keyframe Color Labels feature has been in Beta builds (and only Beta builds) since 22.3. You can install Beta apps via the Creative Cloud desktop app.

Instructions on how to install Beta apps are here:
https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/global/creative-cloud-beta.html

V

Valter Igor5FC7

Participant

Hey @TimKurkoski

I looked at the link you provided, and the instructions mention a beta app icon on the left in the creative could app. But in my creative cloud app, there is no icon for beta apps.

I attached an image of my creative cloud app.

Is there another way to install the beta version?

G

gabrielemontinaro

Participant

Amazing feature!!!
Color palette advice
I tried it and I have a few comments, a good idea in my opinion could be to give the possibility to have another color palette for the colors of the keyframes, I would not like to have the same palette of levels.
There are dark colors that work for layers but when used with keyframes it is difficult to see them in the timeline.

Selection tools advice
Now if I select all the keyframes of the same color I select all those visible in the timeline.
I hope it will be possible to have three selection options:
- the one that exists now, which only selects the keyframes of the same color visible in the timeline
- a selection that allows me to also choose the keframes of the same color, even those that are not seen in the timeline
- and one that allows me to select keyframes of the same color but only of the level I'm selecting

TimKurkoski

Community Manager

Thanks for the feedback, @gabrielemontinaro

RE: color palette

Our designers have spent quite a bit of time looking at alternate default colors for the labels in Preferences > Labels. It's a little tricky, because once you apply a color label, it doesn't live in isolation on your screen, it needs to be work well when the keyframe shading is split (dark/light), be visible against the background color of the Timeline panel, and work with the blue highlight color. At the same time, all of the same colors need to work for not only keyframes, but markers and masks and layers, too! This is an area we will continue to play with, but you can always choose your own colors in the preferences.

RE: selection tools

- a selection that allows me to also choose the keframes of the same color, even those that are not seen in the timeline

This is now available in After Effects Beta 22.5 build 25! There is a new menu, Select Keyframe Color Label, that includes new options for selecting keyframes even if they aren't visible. Please see the link in my previous post.

- and one that allows me to select keyframes of the same color but only of the level I'm selecting

I presume by "only of the level you're selecting", you mean the property or the layer? That's a suggestion we've seen elsewhere and are considering it for future iterations. Please let us know if there are other specific selection models you'd like to see.

TimKurkoski

Community Manager

Two new features for keyframe color labels are now available in today's build of After Effects Beta, 22.5 build 25:

Select Keyframe Color Label commands; more options for selecting keyframes in the same label group
Scripting hooks for setting and reading keyframe color labels

More detail here:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-beta-discussions/updates-to-keyframe-color-labels/m-p/12941519#M2134

the_dudes

Inspiring

This is great news! KF-colors will help a lot with organizing! – The outlines, I find them a tad intrusive to look at in the current design. Maybe reduce the stroke size?

TimKurkoski

Community Manager

The outlines, I find them a tad intrusive to look at in the current design. Maybe reduce the stroke size?

Thanks for the feedback. Some questions for you:

What OS (and version) are you using.
Is display scaling enabled for your monitor in the Display Settings for the OS? (On Windows, 100% vs. 150%, etc. On Mac, the Scaled option.)

During development of the keyframe highlights, we iterated through a number of different designs and landed at the current result, which is a 1px blue highlight around the outside of the keyframe. Hard to get smaller than 1px! But that's at 100%. When display scaling is enabled, the highlight also gets scaled. So at 200%, the highlight is thicker at 2px, and on close inspection it can look wider due to anti-aliasing, but this is in proportion to the entire keyframe being twice as large.

OS can also have an impact on the apparent thickness of the highlight when display scaling is involved. At 100% and 200% Mac and Windows are both pretty smooth, but in-between those values I find Windows to get a little chunky on close inspection. Mac seems to do a better job of anti-aliasing for non-integer magnification values.

R

Robert243761150cu2

Participant

Sounds great. But can one set the default color? Ive alwasys hated the hard to see default blue. Be great if I could set default to something brighter.
That said, can you set default for a property. Example: Position Yellow, Rotation Red, Scale Green

FrankAE

Participating Frequently

I've created a feature request for it based on your idea. You can vote for it here:

https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/forums/911311-after-effects/suggestions/45149746-preferences-default-keyframes-colours

J

Jacek 360creative.pl

Participant

Selection looks really bad for me, it should be more subtle, like a white vertical line thru keyframe, or something similar.

jasonc79007280

Participant

I agree that the outline selection is too busy looking. I think the colored keyframes should behave like the layer bars in the timeline. They are more muted when unselected and get brighter/more intense when selected. Here are a few mockups:

LAR5

Participating Frequently

Thanks for finally implementing colored keyframes! 🙏

Regarding the new outline selection, it came to my attention, that expanding from the rounded icons, the outlines get even more rounded, so selected linear keyframes are not sooo different in appearance than the auto bezier ones. Maybe the outlines could get sharp corners in some cases? Yeah, just a detail... 😉
Thanks!

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