Animated AE text > How to apply Photoshop plugins to just text

[Mylenium]

I think you must be doing something wrong. I suspect you are using some footage and didn’t remove/ hide it before rendering out the text layers you put on top of it which of course would be the necessary thing to do. I don’t sse any problems at the PS side of things. PS automatically recognises Alpha channels even if they aren’t named properly. Applying your effects should be easy. Just create a style and save it as a preset to your palette. After that all you need is an action to batch-apply this preset to all your images.

Mylenium

[Pour Myl

[Daniel R]

Hi Mylenium ,
no , I just have the Text layer with no footage below it .
I render as a Photoshop sequence with RGB+Alpha .

Import into Photoshop 6 ..comes in as 1 Background Layer .Filters work on the whole canvas .

Regards
Daniel

[Daniel R]

The only way AE seems to export .PSD files with layers is with :

Composition > Save Frame as > Photoshop Layers

None of the other render options seem to preserve layers ???

[Mylenium]

Nope, no other render option and I don’t see a problem with that(When would you want to save a comp with tons of layers except you needed a single frame for print or other stuff? It occurs so rarely.). Unlike I suspected, your problem is really at the PS side. Version 6 does not have the behavior of automatically detecting Alpha. Time to upgrade. You can, however, still create an action. Just hit the record button on your action palette and do the following:

a) Double-click on the layer in the layers palette to turn it into a floating layer.
b) Ctrl+click the Alpha channel in the channel palette. A selection should appear.
c) Apply this selection as a layer mask by clicking on the mask icon in the layers palette.
d) Now add all the actions needed for aplying the style as written in my original reply.

You should end up with a action that you now can batch-apply to e.g. a Targa sequence.

Mylenium

[Pour Myl

[Filip Vandueren]

if you rendered out with premulitplied alpha, you should add two more steps to that action:

a) Double-click on the layer in the layers palette to turn it into a floating layer.
b) Ctrl+click the Alpha channel in the channel palette. A selection should appear.
c) Apply this selection as a layer mask by clicking on the mask icon in the layers palette.

d) Layer -> Remove Layer Mask-> Apply
e) Layer -> Matting -> Remove Black Matte

f) Now add all the actions needed for aplying the style as written in my original reply.

If you don’t, you’ll have a black halo around your white letters where they’re anti-aliased.