Tips'n'Tricks

Your Shift and Arrow keys want you to work faster, too

Navigating nested compositions just got a lot faster. When you tap the Shift key, the Composition Mini-Flowchart opens to show [...]



Your right mouse button wants you to work faster

Rather than hunting around in the menus at the top of the application window for a command, try Control-clicking (PC: [...]



Your spreadsheet is a keyframe editor

You can copy-and-paste keyframes as tabdelimited text. Just select keyframes for one or more properties on the same layer, then [...]



Hundreds of freebies waiting just for you

To exchange scripts, projects, and other useful items with other users, go to the Adobe Exchange. You can find the [...]



Render once

In After Effects, you don’t have to render multiple times to export to multiple formats. You can apply multiple output [...]



Find things much faster now

The Project, Timeline, and Effects & Presets panels each contain search fields that you can use to filter items in [...]



Your text animation system is a 3D vector graphics toolkit

The After Effects text animation system is very powerful. So why not use it for more than just text? For [...]



ActionScript goes green

You’ve got options for reusing an animation in your document with code. You can assign an Instance Name to an [...]



One way to keep a New Year’s resolution

Flash CS4 makes getting your symbols organized in your Library as easy as drag-and-drop. So after you’ve created a new [...]



One stone—whole flock of birds

Flash CS4 also lets you edit the properties of multiple assets in the Library with one dialog. Just select a [...]



Got a bone to pick?

Want to edit a specific bone without having to recreate the entire armature? IK Shape bone placement can be edited at [...]



Snap to it

When using the Bone tool (X) to create a new armature, the transformation point is automatically set at the location [...]



Assets can run, but they can’t hide

Flash CS4 can filter Library assets! If you work on projects with “ginormous” numbers of assets to manage, then with [...]



Yes, you’re hearing things

Unleash your inner Foley artist. Flash CS4 now comes with a collection of sample sounds from Soundbooth. To access them [...]



When you have to make hundreds of balls bounce

Applying motion quickly to selected objects has never been faster. First, select an object- better yet, select a few, they’re [...]