Design Center Tutorial
Using the Keylight filter in After Effects
Talk to any Adobe® After Effects® user who has any sort of history with the application, and he or she will tell you the most valuable, industrial-strength keying tool in the arsenal is Keylight. This filter, which is available only in the Professional edition of After Effects 7, was introduced into version 6 of After Effects and is used for any number of tasks ranging from Hollywood films to Flash® video. Just be aware that we are not going to explore a lot of what you can do with this filter. In fact, we will only be scratching the surface of its capabilities. Even so, you will be amazed at its power and ease of use.
Note: The Keylight filter is not automatically installed when you install After Effects 7 Professional. It is included in the third-party software option on the install disk.
Requirements
To complete this article, you will need the following software and files:
Adobe After Effects
Flash
Sample file:
Prerequisite knowledge:
Basic knowledge of working with alpha channels in After Effects
About the authors
Tom Green is a professor of interactive multimedia at the Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning in Toronto, Ontario. He is the author of several best-selling books in the area of Flash and Flash technologies. His latest book is Foundation Flash CS3 for Designers, coauthored with David Stiller, and he recently completed an updated version of Foundation Flash CS3 Video, which will be available early in 2008. Tom has completed DVD videos for Lynda.com and Adobe Systems, and is a partner at Community MX and regular contributor to Digital-Web.com. He is also an active member of the Adobe Community Experts Group, speaking at conferences and seminars around the world and contributing regularly to the Adobe Developer Connection in the areas of Flash and video technologies.
Tiago Dias started to get into Flash around the time of Flash 3, after seeing his first Flash site. He started off by doing freelance work on the side from his day job as a network/systems engineer. On the motion graphics side of things, he got a lot of After Effects and Adobe Premiere® experience at multimedia school in Zurich. From those humble beginnings, he now works as a video producer and Flash developer at a corporate television and news production company based in London with subsidiaries around the world. This is Tiago’s ideal job, as it combines two of his favorite technologies! In his free time, he writes tutorials on Flash and After Effects for various communities, tries to go snowboarding every time the sun is shining in the Swiss Alps, or hops on a plane to visit new countries. He currently lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland.
Excerpted from “From After Effects to Flash” by Tom Green and Tiago Dias. © 2006. Used with the permission of friends or ED, a division of Elsevier. To purchase this book, please visit www.friendsofed.com
