Adobe After Effects - Manual (Page 304)

Paint tools: Brush, Clone Stamp,and Eraser
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Note:
Note:
Paint tools and paint strokes
Brushes and the Brushes panel
Paint with the Brush tool
Clone Stamp tool
Eraser tool
Animate and edit paint strokes
Paint tools and paint strokes
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.)
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.
The Roto Brush tool shares some features with the paint tools, and you can work with Roto Brush strokes in many of the same ways as
paint strokes. For information about the Roto Brush tool and Roto Brush strokes, see Roto Brush strokes, spans, and base frames.
Chris and Trish Meyer give tips for using After Effects paint tools, including the Clone Stamp tool, in an article on the ProVideo Coalition website .
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.
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