Copy a path from Illustrator, Photoshop, or Fireworks

You can copy a path from Illustrator, Photoshop, or Fireworks and paste it into After Effects as a mask path or shape path.

To make the data copied from Illustrator compatible with After Effects, the AICB option must be selected in the Files & Clipboard section of the Adobe Illustrator Preferences dialog box.

For a path imported from Photoshop to be scaled correctly, the Photoshop document must have a resolution of 72 dpi. 72 dpi is the Resolution setting of documents created in Photoshop using a Film & Video preset.

Path drawn in Adobe Illustrator (left) and pasted into After Effects as a mask (right)

Note: You can also use a copied Illustrator, Photoshop, or Fireworks path as an After Effects motion path. See Create a motion path from a mask, shape, or paint path for more information.
  1. In Illustrator, Photoshop, or Fireworks, select an entire path, and then choose Edit > Copy.
  2. In After Effects, do one of the following to define a target for the paste operation:

    • To create a new mask, select a layer.

    • To replace an existing mask path or shape path, select its Path property.

    Note: To paste a path as a shape path, you must select the Path property of an existing shape in a shape layer. This selection tells After Effects what the target of the paste operation is; if the target isn’t specified in this way, After Effects assumes that the target is the entire layer and therefore draws a new mask. If there is no Path property—perhaps because the shape layer is empty—then you can draw a placeholder path with the Pen tool and then paste the path from Illustrator into the placeholder path.
  3. Choose Edit > Paste.

    If you paste multiple paths into a shape path, the first path goes into the shape path, and the remaining paths are pasted into new mask paths. This behavior is because the paths other than the first one don’t have a clearly defined target, so they are added to the entire layer as masks.

    To paste multiple paths into multiple shape paths simultaneously, first create and select multiple placeholder shape paths in After Effects. Trish and Chris Meyer provide details of this technique, plus related tips and tricks on the ProVideo Coalition website.