Adobe After Effects is one of the best 2D/3D animation and video editing software on the market! After Effects is commonly used for motion graphics, visual effects, and compositing. If you begin with Adobe After Effects, you might want to know some useful keyboard shortcuts for navigating around your project and performing common tasks faster.

Level up your video editing skills using these best keyboard shortcuts on Adobe After Effects!

Table of Contents:

• What is an After Effect Keyboard Shortcut?
• How to Use After Effect Shortcuts?
• Essential Keyboard Shortcuts After Effect
  • Preferences Shortcuts
  • General Shortcuts
  • Project Shortcuts
  • Activate tools
  • Panels, viewers, workspaces, and windows
  • Footage
• Customized Keyboard Shortcuts
  • How to customize After Effect keyboard shortcuts?
  • Why should you customize shortcuts on After Effect?

What is an After Effect Keyboard Shortcut?

If you want to speed up your video editing on Adobe After Effects, you should familiarize yourself with the keyboard shortcuts. Keyboard shortcuts are more efficient than using a mouse/trackpad to select menu items visually.

A keyboard shortcut is a combination of one or more key presses, which instructs the computer to carry out a task. Quite often keyboard shortcuts have letters in common with the menu command they are associated with. For example, the letter P is used for both Play and Purge options, so it's not hard to remember that pressing Alt + P on your keyboard will play your project.

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How to Use After Effect Shortcuts?

To use an After Effect keyboard, you simply have to press the particular key or combination of keys at one time. You can also import or export user-defined shortcuts (with .jsx files) for other Adobe applications, like Photoshop and Illustrator, into After Effects.

On the top menu, click on Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts to open the Adobe After Effect shortcuts dialog box. You can then browse through different menus and submenus to look for the exact shortcut you are looking for. If you are curious, you also have the option of clicking on each menu item to know what they do.

However, it is important to note that not all Adobe After Effect shortcuts are listed in this dialog box. There are some hidden shortcuts that you need to know and we will share some of them with you in this article!

Essential Keyboard Shortcuts After Effect

Speed up your edit process with these After Effect keyboard shortcuts.

Both Windows and Mac OS support the use of After Effect keyboard shortcuts.

For Windows: Use Ctrl and Alt.

For Mac OS: Use Command and Option.

Preferences Shortcuts

General Shortcuts

Project Shortcuts

Activate tools

Panels, viewers, workspaces, and windows

Footage 

Customized Keyboard Shortcuts

After Effects, users can change any keyboard shortcut to fit their workflow.

How to customize After Effect keyboard shortcuts?

The Keyboard Shortcut Customization tool is available in Adobe After Effects and allows you to customize the keyboard shortcut for any command/ menu item. It makes customization easy compared to manually editing an XML file.

1- Open the Keyboard Shortcut Customization tool from Adobe After Effects by pressing Ctrl+Alt+' (Command+Option+’ for Mac OS). A dialog box will pop up showing a list of commands and corresponding keyboard shortcuts.

2- Save a new Keyboard Layout Preset

3- Choose either the whole application or specific panels that you want to edit the keyboard shortcut for

2- You can add, modify or remove any shortcut key for these commands. To add a new shortcut key, type the Command name and your desired keyboard shortcut in corresponding fields.

3- Once you've entered all the values, click on Save. To cancel the settings, click on Cancel.

Why should you customize shortcuts on After Effect?

Using customized shortcuts will help you save time and do the editing work easier. If you use shortcuts, you can finish your video editing task faster without moving your hands from the keyboard.

You'll also become more productive. Using shortcuts in Premiere Pro makes your workflow smoother and increases your editing performance.

Conclusion:

Learning and using these keyboard shortcuts on Adobe After Effect will save you a lot of time in the long run. The more you use shortcuts, the faster you'll be able to work and perform tasks in Premiere Pro.

Now that you know some basic shortcuts with After Effect, let's take a look at some advanced features and actions you can do with this video editing software!

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