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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects Zoom in on image but keeping text the same size

  • Zoom in on image but keeping text the same size

    Posted by Gregory Robbins on June 24, 2022 at 12:11 pm

    I have an image that I have labeled different parts with text. I want to be zooming and panning into different parts of the image throughout the video.

    My problem is the text also scales up when I zoom in on the image, which I don’t want. I’m not sure how to keep it the same.

    I pick whip the whole text layer to the image, but it zooms in when the image zooms in.

    I tried pick whipping just the position of the text layer to the image position, that works but then I can’t move the text to where I need it (just puts it in the middle). I then tried adding a Transform effect to move it’s position, but that gets weird and off track when zooming in.

    I’ve tried a null and pick whipping/parenting them in various ways, but nothing works.

    Any advice is greatly appreciated!!

    Attached picture shows issues described

    I feel like there’s just something obvious I’m missing, as this shouldn’t be too difficult to do.

    Veronica Barron replied 1 year, 2 months ago 6 Members · 5 Replies
  • 5 Replies
  • Eric Santiago

    June 24, 2022 at 12:48 pm

    Plan your camera moves first then add Text after.

    You can also track after.

  • Andy Kiernan

    June 24, 2022 at 3:22 pm

    maybe put value + (”pickwhip”) where ”pickwhip” is the pickwhippin you already did, That should enable you to move the layer about again.

  • Frank Mansfield

    June 27, 2022 at 11:25 am

    If I understand correctly what you’re after (apologies if I don’t!) then the simplest way might be to create a null layer for each piece of text as a sort of locator-null.

    That way, you can parent the locator-null to the map you’re scaling up and then create an expression on the text layer position to link it to the position of the locator null (so, basically, the null will scale with the map, but you only take the position of the null layer to locate your text layer).

    You do need to convert the null position from local to world position, but just refer to the wisdom of Dan Eberts for that and you get something like…

    1) Create null layer (“locaterNull”)

    2) position the null layer where your text needs to be

    3) parent the null layer to the map you’re scaling

    4) apply this expression to the position of your text layer:

    l=thisComp.layer(“locatorNull”);

    l.toWorld(l.anchorPoint);

    Hope that helps!
    -f

  • Nick Hill

    June 28, 2022 at 2:51 pm

    Here’s an alternative way that may be simpler:

    1) Create your master layer that you’ll put your scale / position keyframes onto

    2) Make your text layer(s) and parent them to the master layer

    3) Alt/Option-click each text layer’s scale property to add this expression:

    s = thisLayer.parent.scale[0]/100;
    scale / s

    This will keep the text layer’s scale at 100% but it will take its rotation & position from its parent.

  • Veronica Barron

    July 3, 2022 at 5:16 pm

    Your system is simpler and very useful.

    Thank you very much!

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