Text
Text editing needs After Effects 2024 or newer. Create text with the Text tool, or click into a pulled text layer to type.
Character
Section titled “Character”Select one text layer to format it under Character:
- Font family and style. The list opens at the font in use; type to filter it. Refresh installed fonts rereads your fonts.
- Size, Leading (including Auto), Kerning, Tracking. Each has a menu of presets.
- Fill and Stroke, each a checkbox and a color, plus Stroke Width
- Stroke join: Miter Join, Round Join or Bevel Join
- Fill and stroke order: Fill Over Stroke, Stroke Over Fill, All Fills Over All Strokes, All Strokes Over All Fills
- Vertical Scale, Horizontal Scale, Baseline Shift, Tsume
- All Caps and Small Caps. Turn both on for all small caps.
- Superscript and Subscript
- Ligatures, Hindi Digits
Paragraph
Section titled “Paragraph”- Alignment: Left Align Text, Center Text, Right Align Text, and four justify options for paragraph text only
- Left Indent, Right Indent, Space Before, Space After, First Line Indent
- Direction: Left to right or Right to left
Moving and transforming text
Section titled “Moving and transforming text”Text moves, scales and rotates like any object, 3D text layers included. Shearing text asks to outline it first: the text becomes shapes on a new layer, and the text layer stays in After Effects, switched off. Grouping, Pathfinder and Replicate ask the same.
Limits
Section titled “Limits”- Japanese, Chinese and Korean input methods are not supported on the canvas. Edit that text in After Effects.
- Text cannot take a gradient.
- Convert to shapes in After Effects (right-click) turns text layers into shape layers, for Pathfinder and point editing.