Tutorial for KeyED Up, the shortcut editor

François Tarlier has a video quicktip on how to enhance your workflow with KeyED Up.

You can edit mapping of AE shortcut keys in a preference file but this script by Jeff Almasol gives you a UI to modify shortcut keys in After Effects.

For more on shortcuts in After Effects, click the tag shortcuts.

Keyboard shortcuts you (maybe) don't use

Laurence Grayson of Shortformvideo is back with another video tutorial (below), The best keyboard shortcuts you (probably) don't use, which is a bit like a primer for Chris Zwar on After Effects features that most people don’t seem to notice.

Keyboard shortcuts were easier to learn in the past when Adobe had printed multi-fold shortcut guides. AE shortcuts (listed in Help and in the Adobe Shortcut App) can be edited in preferences, but it's much easier with Jeff Almasol's script UI "KeyEd Up." The old Use After Effects' Shortcuts with non-English Keyboards by Jonas Hummelstrand seems like it's still useful, as does the Adobe After Effects CS4 Keyboard Shortcuts Cheatsheet (printable PDF) by Denis Klepcha on Aetuts.

Premiere for switchers

Adobe has a big push to attract new users and switchers away Apple. It seems that Adobe has a window until a probable late 2011 update to ProApps (various references), with Steve Jobs messages (calling the next versions "awesome" then apparently downgraded to "great") working on user nerves. But rumors work both ways, with scenarios of Microsoft buying Adobe and Avid, and early switchers taking a longer view and switching back to Final Cut [update: Todd Kopriva noted that this article was based on experience with CS4, though workflow issues might remain even with better XML in CS5].

To lure users, Adobe has posted a video series on Switching to Premiere Pro CS5 with Karl Soule and Kevin Monahan. Monahan, who with Sharon Franklin and others started the first FCP user group (SF Cutters) in 2000 and had been in quality assurance various times at Apple, now has steady work promoting Premiere as Todd Kopriva's replacement on the Adobe Learning Resources team. And as Kevin notes on his blog, there's a 4-Part Premiere Pro & Switcher Series Coming Next Week!

[Update: PVC has a roundup of the recordings in Switching to Adobe Premiere Pro-A 4-part switcher series.]

Here's a sample from the Adobe TV Switcher series from Soule and Monahan, on keyboard shortcuts in Premiere and how to customize the keyboard to make it more familiar for Final Cut Pro users:

Update: here's a nice demo via Karl Soule (he's using Windows, which may explain his amazement about people still using Final Cut),

CS5: Cutting off the Card from Clint Milby on Vimeo.

Update 2: the video above ended up in an article on PVC. Though the title's Premiere = "salvation" is over-the-top, Karl Soule added these comments,

"There still are some effects that require rendering, and Clint uses some of these effects in his video. However, the following effects DON’T require any rendering in a properly configured system:

Positioning
Scaling
Opacity
Blending Modes (including 25 blending modes from Photoshop)
Fast Color Corrector
Three-Way Color Corrector
RGB Color Corrector
RGB Curves
Gaussian Blur
Sharpen
Color Balance
Gamma Correction
Ultra Key (Chroma Keying)
multiple Garbage Matte Effects
Track Matte
Noise
Basic 3D
Drop Shadow
Crop
Edge Feather
Dissolves
Dip to color effects
Levels

This isn’t a full list, but should give you some idea of the effects that are real-time, and don’t require rendering.Now, what is a “properly configured system”? It just means that the system has a recommended graphics card, like a $300 GTX 470 card. These effects are all GPU-accelerated, and won’t give the “red bar” on the timeline."

Update 3: maybe someday a Premiere fan will get a rebuttal from an Avid user, like the posts by FCP fans; see Dylan Reeve on What IS the big deal about FCP?

Premiere: multiple transitions at once + shortcuts

Learn Premiere Pro CS5 - Add multiple transitions is a new quick tip on adding multiple transitions at once in Premiere, something that Final Cut could do since day 1. It's a feature that can save time and money:

Unfortunately, as Adobe seems to favor marketing over help resources (at least for video products), this quick tip may also be promoting navigation practices that cost more money. Direct manipulation with a mouse is great but Premiere also has keyboard shortcuts to make navigation faster, like the =/- keys to zoom the timeline and Page Up/Down to go to next the edit or clip. The =/- keys even work while you're dragging media, which is nice on days when you have a bee in your bonnet.

A list of shortcuts is in Premiere Pro Help. Keyboard shortcuts were easier to learn in the past when Adobe had printed multi-fold shortcut guides. If you wish, you can customize keyboard shortcuts and load the Avid or Final Cut keyboard instead (though some versions ago the ones for Final Cut were not complete or correct).

Update: Beware of some of the shorthands for shifted and unshifted character found in Premiere CS5 Help (in Keyboard shortcuts and Panels). By the way here's a recent video on shortcuts in Premiere:

After Effects Leftovers: 40 tips better the next day

Update: Todd Kopriva has outlined the series, adding links to Help pages for more detail.

Chris Zwar has a 5-part video series on PVC, After Effects Leftovers: Reheating old features you forgot you had, with 40 tips that look at often overlooked features. Three of the videos are up now.

The Adobe Shortcut App

The Adobe Shortcut App is a new AIR application that's a database of all of the keyboard shortcuts for all of CS4, all in one handy place.

Todd Kopriva reminds some of us that "To see all of the shortcuts, be sure to click All Categories. The default Essentials view just shows a small subset"! Todd thinks that "the information appears to be identical to that in the Keyboard shortcuts section of After Effects Help." For information on editing keyboard shortcuts and scripts (and scriptable AE commands without shortcuts), see the KeyEd Up script by Jeff Almasol.

Resizing Brush & Hardness in AE and PS

In After Effects, resizing a Paint Brush is fairly straightforward. Control-drag (Windows) or Command-drag (Mac OS) the brush in the Layer panel to adjust Size, and release the key and continue to drag to adjust Hardness. For more, see Forgotten AE Paint shortcuts here and Brushes and the Brushes panel in AE Help.

In Photoshop, shortcuts for paint tools can be a bit more involved, especially if you irregularly move between platforms. You can use the bracket keys [] to change Brush Size and add the Shift key to the mix to change the Brush Hardness. In Photoshop CS4, with a Paint Tool selected, you can get the Brushes preset picker with Control-click (Mac) or Right-click (Win).

Even better, to change Brush Size directly hold the Control + Option keys (Mac) or Right-click + Alt (Win) while clicking and dragging the mouse. To drag-resize Brush softness just add Command or Shift; on the Mac you use Control + Option + Command while drag-clicking, while on Windows it's Shift + Right-click + Alt.

A red overlay temporarily previews the Size and Hardness of the Brush; this color can be changed in Preferences > Cursors > Brush Preview. Julieanne Kost has covered other Brush shortcuts.

Time-Reverse Keyframes script

Lloyd Alvarez answered a call for help on the AE-List today and posted his Time-Reverse Keyframes script (temp location 2014) on AEscripts.com. The Time-Reverse Keyframes Keyframe Assistant, found under the Animation menu, doesn't have a shortcut so running it on numerous layers can be tedious. This script runs the Keyframe Assistant automatically and can be assigned a shortcut.

Rather than creating the shortcut by editing text preferences manually, Lloyd's FAQ recommends the keyboard shortcuts editor KeyEd Up by Jeff Almasol, mentioned previously in Modify shortcut keys in AE and Additional Scripts for After Effects CS4 (2014, at Adobe Addons).

To add a shortcut for a script in KeyEd Up, go to (category) General > Run Script and pick the number of the script you renamed as 01 [name], etc as shown by Sébastien Périer in instructions for KeyEd Up in his Top 10 list of After Effects workflow enhancing scripts.

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Scripting and expressions can be intimidating, but using them isn't so much, especially with user community help. Lloyd Alvarez showed how scripts smooth workflows in his AENY presentation on AE scripting, while the Coleman and Ebberts videos on scripting talked (Flash) users through the basics. Chris & Trish Meyer's After Effects Apprentice Video Tutorial #5 provides a gentle introduction to expressions. An overview of the AE scripting scene can be found in the AEP roundup Expressions & Scripting Resources for After Effects.

Update: Lloyd added another script to his library, Add Parented Null to Selected Layers.

Earlier, Lloyd also explained How to install and run scripts:

Scripts Installation Tutorial for Adobe After Effects from Lloyd on Vimeo.
Update 2: Lloyd has another new script, Layer Marker Rename and Number.

Forgotten AE Paint shortcuts

Michael Coleman has some Paint shortcuts we might have forgotten to tell you about.

AE LiveDocs Help has the other shortcuts for CS3 and CS4, and of course covers Paint tools: Brush, Clone Stamp, and Erase. The current basics of paint in AE is discussed at Lynda.com in After Effects CS4 Essential Training; it may become free at some point on AdobeTV but now the CS3 training for AE Paint is free on the Adobe Video Workshop.

Update: For Photoshop, John Nack has Layer-related shortcuts you might want to know, and Scott Kelby hosts It’s “Guest Blog Wednesday” featuring Bryan Hughes! to remind you of the useful features in PS CS3 and CS4.

Premiere Pro Keyboard Shortcuts

The Genesis Project has a 7 minute video tutorial on Premiere Pro Keyboard Shortcuts.

AE shortcuts can be edited in preferences (and for non-English keyboards), or as mentioned last month with Jeff Almasol's scripted UI 'KeyEd Up.'

Modify shortcut keys in AE

You can edit mapping of AE shortcut keys in a preference file but this is much easier. As noted last month there's a new release by Jeff Almasol at Adobe Exchange. Part of Additional Scripts for After Effects CS3 is KeyEd Up, which gives you a UI to modify shortcut keys in After Effects.

Jeff also likes his Launch Pad script for "its coolness and ability to associate icons with scripts," and also he's posted screenshots of some of his updated scripts at Flickr. Numerous other script and expression resources were listed in an earlier post Scripts Galore and as Panels in AE8.