At some point, everyone will experience the challenge of organizing and positioning layers in a composition.
But using the right tools and features can make this process a little bit easier.
If we look at our project, you'll notice we have a bunch of different layers that really aren't very well organized.
As we organize these layers, we're going to work on creating a touchscreen interface focused around these different travel icons.
And the icons need to line up along this blue bar.
And since that's so dominant, let's start by making sure this blue bar is aligned horizontally in the composition.
Go down and select Layer 8 in the Timeline.
And press UU on the keyboard rather quickly.
And that will open any of the changed parameters for that shape layer.
So, if you notice, under the Transform options for Rectangle 1 the X value is 18.5 Let's click on that and change its value to 0.0.
And now the layer is perfectly aligned horizontally in the composition.
We can go ahead and collapse Layer 8.
And let's focus on the different icons.
Select Layer 2.
This is the leftmost icon, and you'll notice I have handles.
If you click on any layer handles and the Composition panel, it will allow you to scale, and transform, and distort that layer, unless you hold down the Shift key as you drag.
And that will keep the layer in proportion.
This center crosshair is actually called the anchor point.
And that's the point at which the layer will rotate around whenever you rotate that layer.
I'll go ahead and press Control Z on Windows to undo the last transform.
Let's select all of these different icons by going to the Label color here in the Timeline.
And click on the label for Layer 2 Go up and choose Select Label Group, and that'll select all the layers with the same label which happened to be all these Illustrator CC layers.
Now let's align these different icons.
Go up under the Window menu and open the Align panel.
Under Align, we want to go ahead and align the layers to the Selection.
And we'll align the bottom first by clicking this button here on the right.
And then let's have it distribute the different layers based on the center of each layer by clicking this button here under Distribute Layers.
Now I want to reposition these layers in the middle of the blue bar vertically.
So, I'm going to go up to the upper portion of the interface and enable Snapping.
Now since I want the center of these icons to line up with the center of this blue bar, I'm going to reposition this icon by clicking as close to that center point as possible, but not directly on it.
Then when I go to reposition these layers, notice the center point is what's snapping to the center point of this blue bar.
And we'll visually line it up horizontally.
Now the logos are a little large.
So, let's press S to open up the Scale, and scrub on any one of the scale parameters to scale all these different icons down.
Now to reposition the word 'Travel', I'll do the same thing with Snapping.
But this time I'll click near the lower left-hand corner since that's the point that I want to snap on the different elements in the scene.
And let's line it up on the upper left corner of this left icon.
Go ahead and let go, and you can use the up arrow to move the layer one pixel at a time up.
Or if you use the down arrow, it'll move down.
So, when it comes to positioning layers inside of After Effects CC, you definitely want to pay attention to what layer is selected at any given moment.
And then exactly where you're clicking on that layer when it comes to repositioning the layer.
And you'll definitely want to take advantage of Snapping and the Align panel.
