Some other good one to try are Anton and Jost Black. Hot tip: By opening the Layers panel and selecting both text items you can then try out different fonts using the same effect. With both flares still selected, duplicate them again and re-position as per Kris’ example. Click ‘align middle’ and position them on the edges of your letters. Select both flares and use the align tool again.

To adjust the lighting effect to white, click on effects in the Actionbar and drop the brightness slider down to -100 Then check the Invert toggle to make it white.

To get an extra accent duplicate it and make it slightly smaller. Adjust the size and move it over the top of your letters.

Add in some lighting accents by going to images, selecting Stock Images and search for ‘flare’.

Select both text boxes and use the align tool to position them exactly.

With the foreground text selected go back to the shadow button in the Actionbar, choose glow again and update the blur slider to 8, and set it to white.

Remember glowing effects generally work best on darker or super saturated colors.

To create the foreground glow, duplicate your text and update the color to match the background.

Update the blur slider to 70 and choose the same bright pink we use in the text. With the text selected, click on the shadow button in the Actionbar and select the glow preset.

This effect is made by using 2 types of glows, a background and a foreground glow.

Change the background color of the graphic to black by clicking off any elements (eg to the side of the page) and then choose black from the color picker from the top toolbar.

Choose a hot pink to duplicate the effect created in our example.

Apply a bright color to the text by selecting it and clicking on the color options.

In this example, Kris has used Black Hans Sans for its retro styling and boldness.

Add text to your design by adding from the ‘Text’ tab on the right sidebar.

This is a great effect to use on Black Friday and Cyber Monday graphics, as well as Halloween posters and graphics. This comes up because some layer styles (particularly gradient strokes or anything with texture or pattern settings) don’t translate well into After Effects, and merging them will bake in the desired appearance.In this first effect, Kris shows you how to use dark text on an equally dark background, and use a hot pink glow to make it stand out. When I imported this PSD into After Effects, I selected to import it as a Composition with Cropped Layers so that I could retain all of the layer and compositing info from Photoshop:Īfter I selected this, I get a new dialog asking if I want to import editable layer styles or merge them. I found a cool “gel” layer style here, and you can see all of the layer styles applied in Photoshop: Or you can select a layer, then go to the ‘Layer’ on the menu bar and apply them from there:Īnother cool feature is the ability to import layer styles when you import a layered PSD. Right clicking on a layer in your comp will reveal the option to add them:Ģ. You can apply layer styles to a layer in two ways…ġ. Pre-comping is usually the solution to these issues. One word of caution though: layer styles are applied after any other effects or compositing, so you might run into weird results when trying to combine layer styles with other effects, mattes, or even motion blur.

It’s most commonly used for text, but it can be useful in a ton of creative ways once you get the hang of it. This can bee great for all sorts of design effects. One of the killer features of After Effects that’s surprisingly not well known is the ability to apply layer styles just like Photoshop, or even import them directly from Photoshop PSDs. Bring layer styles from Photoshop into After Effects!

Caution photoshop text style