The After Effects Illusionist: All the Effects in One Complete Guide

by Chad Perkins

Covers CS4
This cookbook contains recipe after recipe that allow you to harness the full power of the native plug-in effects in the After Effects application. In a step-by-step manner, author Chad Perkins guides you through the creation and application of each and every native plug-in effect available for use in the AE toolset. The book also shows you how each can be used optimally in your media project, when and why it makes sense to use each, and also how to combine multiple effects.

From color correction effects to distortion effects to stimulation effects and all in between, this book puts the full power of the AE plug-in effects in your hands. It shows you how to create, among
- the shatter effect
- the fractal noise effect
- the glow effects
- the Particle playground effect
- the 3D Channel Extract effect
- the Colorama effect

A CD that contains tutorial project files is included with the book, allowing you to work hand-in-hand with the lessons in the book.

All exercise files on the CD are for use in CS4 only. Non-exercise files on the CD are compatible with any version of After Effects.

592 pages, Paperback

First published January 15, 2009

Reviews

[VampireNovelFan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was just an okay reference guide. The idea is allow you to become really familiar with the native After Effects plug-ins. For what I want to create, I only found a couple of pieces of information that were useful to me. Most of this was just a general "good know" pieces. I'm still looking for the perfect guide on transitions and keying. And now with CS5, some of these effects are outdated. This book is definitely not for a novice. A lot of the knobs are left unexplained. You're just told to adjust it, and not understand how it adds or detracts to the effect. You should learn the use After Effects the right way, and then maybe look into this book to learn the alternative tricks.

*Review also posted to Amazon