CREATING FAVORITES IN MOTION

Creating Favorites in Motion
By Estelle MacDonald

Let’s say you’ve spent a lot of time creating some text. Your text has behaviors, filters and keyframes - everything including the kitchen sink applied to it. Because you are creating a Station ID or a title treatment for a corporate client, you will definitely need to use this text effect again and you don’t want to be recreating it every time you need it. No Worries! Save that text as a favorite and you can apply it to your project with a quick drag n’ drop.

1. Create or locate some text with all the behaviors and filters etc that you want to save. Open the Layers Tab (command + 4).

In my example I created some Fluffy Snowballs text.

2. To prepare this text as a favorite I’m going to give the text layer a descriptive name and give the text object a generic name (the text object should be given a generic name both in the Layers tab and in the canvas). This simple preparation will make a great deal of sense when it comes to sorting through a number of Favorites.

3. Open the Library (command + 2) and down towards the bottom of the list are two folders named Favorites and Favorites Menu. These folders remain empty until you create custom favorites.

These two folders are our targets!!

4. Drag the text layer from the Layers tab into the Favorites folder. It should look something like this…

This mysterious head & shoulders icon indicates a customized effect and you will notice it anytime you save a unique effect, behavior etc.

5. Again drag the text layer from the Layers tab but this time drag it into the Favorites Menu folder.

6. Open a new project. (Command + N)

7. Drag the text favorite from the Library Favorites folder into your Canvas.

8. Open the Layers Tab (command + 4) and select the text object. Double click the text in your canvas and enter text as you want it to appear in your project.

9. Well done, you just saved yourself a ton of work.

Look at the Favorites Menu folder. Place favorites that you want to access through the Favorites Menu into this Folder and then go to the menu dropdown list to place it into your project.

The Menu is a great shortcut for all those favorites you constantly use. The Favorites folders can also contain sub folders. Just control + click anywhere in the grey area and choose new folder from the list. Keeping organized pays well in the end!

Make a mistake? Need to change the name/description? Want to see that preset in the Finder? Hate that favorite? No worries – control + click directly on the icon and choose your function.

Anything that can live in the Layers tab can become a favorite - behaviors, filters, layers, objects, particles…etc, experiment and enjoy!