Text composition methods

The appearance of text on the page depends on a complex interaction of processes called text composition. Using the word spacing, letter spacing, and glyph spacing options you’ve selected, After Effects evaluates possible line breaks and chooses the one that best supports the specified parameters.

After Effects offers two composition methods, which you choose from the Paragraph panel menu:

Adobe Single-line Composer

Offers a traditional approach to composing text one line at a time. This option is useful if you prefer to have manual control over how lines break. If spacing must be adjusted, the Single-line Composer first tries to compress, rather than expand text.

Adobe Every-line Composer

Considers a network of breakpoints for a range of lines and thus can optimize earlier lines in the paragraph to eliminate especially unattractive breaks later on. Working with multiple lines of text results in more even spacing and fewer hyphens. The Every-line Composer approaches composition by identifying possible breakpoints, evaluating them, and assigning a weighted penalty based on these principles:

• Highest importance is given to evenness of letter and word spacing. Possible breakpoints are evaluated and penalized according to how much they deviate from optimal spacing.

• After breakpoint penalty values are identified for a range of lines, they are squared, magnifying the bad breakpoints. The composer then uses the good breakpoints.