Paint tools and paint strokes

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Common operations for paint tools and strokes
Common paint tool settings in the Paint panel

The Brush tool , Clone Stamp tool , and Eraser tool are all paint tools. You use each in the Layer panel to apply paint strokes to a layer. Each paint tool applies brush marks that modify the color or transparency of an area of a layer without modifying the layer source.

Each paint stroke has its own duration bar, Stroke Options properties, and Transform properties, which you can see and modify in the Timeline panel. Each paint stroke is, by default, named for the tool that created it, with a number that indicates the order in which it was drawn.

At any time after you draw a paint stroke, you can modify and animate each of its properties using the same techniques that you use to modify the properties and duration of a layer. You can copy paint stroke path properties to and from properties for mask paths, shape layer paths, and motion paths. For even more power and flexibility, you can link these properties using expressions. (See Creating shapes and masks and Add, edit, and remove expressions.)

Important: To specify settings for a paint stroke before you apply it, use the Paint and Brushes panels. To change and animate properties for a paint stroke after you’ve applied it, work with properties of the stroke in the Timeline panel.

Individual brush marks are distributed along each paint stroke—though the marks may appear to merge together to form a continuous stroke with the default settings. Brush settings for each brush in the Brushes panel determine the shape, spacing, and other properties of brush marks; you can also modify these Stroke Options properties for each stroke in the Timeline panel.

In After Effects, paint strokes are vector objects, which means that they can be scaled up without loss of quality. Paint strokes in some applications, such as Photoshop, are raster objects. (See About vector graphics and raster images.)

Groups of paint strokes appear in the Timeline panel as instances of the Paint effect. Each instance of the Paint effect has a Paint On Transparent option. If you select this option, the layer source image and all effects that precede this instance of the Paint effect in the effect stacking order are ignored; the paint strokes are applied on a transparent layer.

For some painting, drawing, cloning, and retouching tasks, you may want to take advantage of the sophisticated paint tools provided by Adobe Photoshop. See Working with Photoshop and After Effects.

For a video tutorial on using the paint tools, visit the Adobe website at www.adobe.com/go/vid0223.

Common operations for paint tools and strokes

To show paint strokes on selected layers in the Timeline panel, press PP.
To select paint strokes in the Layer panel, use the Selection tool to click a paint stroke or drag a box around portions of multiple paint strokes.
To momentarily activate the Selection tool, press and hold V.
To show only selected paint strokes in the Timeline panel, select paint strokes and press SS.
To rename a paint stroke, select the paint stroke in the Timeline panel and press Enter on the main keyboard (Windows) or Return (Mac OS); or right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) the name and choose Rename.
To reorder paint strokes within an instance of the Paint effect, drag a Paint stroke to a new location in the stacking order in the Timeline panel.
To reorder an instance of the Paint effect to interleave it with other effects, drag the effect to a new location in the stacking order in the Timeline panel.
To target a specific instance of the Paint effect for the addition of new paint strokes, choose from the View menu at the bottom of the Layer panel.
To hide a paint stroke from view (and from rendered output), deselect the Video switch for the paint stroke.
To open or close the Paint panel and Brushes panel when a paint tool is selected, click the Toggle The Paint Panels button .

Common paint tool settings in the Paint panel

To use the Paint panel, first select a paint tool from the Tools panel.

Opacity: For Brush and Clone strokes, the maximum amount of paint applied. For Eraser strokes, the maximum amount of paint and layer color removed.
Flow: For Brush and Clone strokes, how quickly paint is applied. For Eraser strokes, how quickly paint and layer color are removed.
Mode: How pixels in the underlying image are blended with the pixels painted on by the Brush or Clone stroke. (See Blending mode reference.)
Channels: Which channels of the layer the Brush stroke or Clone stroke affect. When you choose Alpha, the stroke only affects opacity, so swatches are grayscale. Painting the alpha channel with pure black has the same result as using the Eraser tool.
Duration: The duration of the paint stroke. Constant applies the stroke from the current frame to the end of the duration of the layer. Single Frame applies the stroke to the current frame only. Custom applies the stroke to the specified number of frames, beginning with the current frame. Write On applies the stroke from the current frame to the end of the duration of the layer and animates the End property of the stroke to match the motion with which the stroke was drawn.
When you have a paint tool active, you can press 1 or 2 (on the main keyboard) to move the current-time indicator forward or backward the number of frames specified by the Duration setting in the Paint panel.