Text fills and strokes



For text, a fill is applied to the area inside the shape of an individual character; a stroke is applied to the outline of the character. After Effects applies a stroke to a character by centering the stroke on the character’s path; half of the stroke appears on one side of the path, and the other half of the stroke appears on the other side of the path.

The Character panel lets you apply both color fill and color stroke to text, control the stroke width, and control the stacking position of the fill and stroke. You can change these properties for individual, selected characters; selected Source Text keyframes; all text in a layer; or all text across multiple selected layers.

You can also control the compositing order of the fill and stroke for a text layer using the All Fills Over All Strokes or All Strokes Over All Fills options, which override the Fill Over Stroke or Stroke Over Fill properties of individual characters.
Note: For text that has per-character 3D properties, you cannot control the order of stroke and fill operations between characters; the Fill & Stroke menu in the More Options property group in the Timeline panel is unavailable, and the All Fills Over All Strokes and All Strokes Over All Fills options in the Character panel do nothing.

Add a stroke (outline) to text

  1. Select the characters to which you want to add a stroke.
  2. Set a stroke size with the Stroke Width  property in the Character panel.
  3. Set the stroke color with the Stroke Color control in the Character panel.
  4. Choose one of the following in the Character panel to control the position of the stroke:
    Stroke Over Fill, Fill Over Stroke
    The stroke of only selected text appears over or behind the fill.

    All Strokes Over All Fills, All Fills Over All Strokes
    Strokes appear over or behind fills in the entire text layer.

Change text fill or stroke color

The text you enter gets its color from the Fill Color and Stroke Color controls in the upper-right corner of the Character panel. Select text to change its color after the text has already been entered.

  • To set fill or stroke color using the color picker, click the Fill Color or Stroke Color control. To set fill or stroke color using the eyedropper, click the eyedropper button and then click anywhere on the screen to sample the color.
  • To swap colors for fill and stroke, click the Swap Fill And Stroke button .
  • To remove fill or stroke, click the No Fill Color button or No Stroke Button. Only one of these buttons is available, depending on whether the Fill Color or Stroke Color box is forward.
  • To set the fill or stroke to black or white, click the Set To Black or Set To White button.
  • To bring the Fill Color or Stroke Color box forward, click it.

Change text stroke line join

The line join type for a stroke determines the shape of the stroke when two segments of the stroke intersect. You set the line join type for a text stroke with the Line Join setting in the panel menu of the Character panel, which you open by clicking the panel menu button in the upper-right tab of the Character panel.

 Choose Miter, Round, or Bevel from the Line Join menu.

Blend overlapping characters in a text layer

  1. In the Timeline panel, expand the text layer and the More Options group.
  2. Choose a blending mode from the Inter-Character Blending menu.
Note: To blend a text layer with the layers beneath it, specify a blending mode from the Modes column in the Timeline panel.

Inter-character blending is not available for text layers with per-character 3D properties.