[Dirk De jong]

I can’t say I’ve used either of these nearly as much as Photoshop (or enough to offer a real endorsement),

but this is a Mac only app I recently read a review of and that I’m kind of interested in ;
https://www.pixelmator.com/pro/

And from time to time I’ve made good use of this (free) open source app (Mac and WIN) that’s been around awhile ;
https://www.gimp.org/

I’m sure there are a lot of others…

[Dirk De jong]

Fantastic. Just what I needed. And I think knowing how to do that will be a very useful thing for me. Thanks again.

[Dirk De jong]

[Dirk de Jong] “I wouldn’t be surprised if there is already a script (or maybe even expression) that could use a file name as the Source Text param value for a text layer
“
Fiddling around I just confirmed that if you apply this expression to the text layer’s Source Text parameter (which you could do in the original copy of your comp)
txt = thisComp.layer(2).source.name;
It would display the source name of the 2nd layer (counting from top down) in the comp – change the (2) to (3) for the name of the 3rd layer, etc.

[Dirk De jong]

This isn’t exactly what you’re asking for, and it’s possible something more like what you’re asking for exists – and I’m pretty sure that’s all possible through scripting (to be able to build the same comp around a chosen source file) – but you might want to take a look at this script (True Comp Duplicator) ; https://aescripts.com/true-comp-duplicator/

This script allows you to duplicate a comp while also duplicating all the files included in the comp so that the new copy is truly independent from the original comp in terms of its dependencies. And it offers useful controls for how deep (in terms of precomping etc.) to make the files “true duplicates” I bought it a few years ago (suggested price $25) and it kind of revolutionized my workflow for creating in AE. Like many users probably do, I end up with comps with at least a few levels of precomps, and when a creation is at a point where there is more than one promising direction it could go in it’s really useful to be able to make a truly independent copy to “branch” it off on its own.

In your case once you had built the comp once with a specific image, you could do a True Duplicate with the script, and then replace the image in the dupe (option drag from the project window onto the original in the timeline or Replace Footage command in the comp window) and type in the new text… But I wouldn’t be surprised if there is already a script (or maybe even expression) that could use a file name as the Source Text param value for a text layer

[Dirk De jong]

[Dan Ebberts] “myEffect01.property(3).expression = ‘comp(“‘ + activeCompName + ‘”).layer(“precomp”).effect(“Slider Control”)(“Slider”)'”

Thanks. I had tried single quotes, double quotes, no quotes – but not triple quotes with plus signs… Now it works just as I had hoped for it to work.

[Dirk De jong]

[Dan Ebberts] “This should work:
var activeCompName = app.project.activeItem.name;”

Thanks for the reply Dan –
A line where I have the script apply an expression in a comp where the specific name is known looks something like this
myEffect01.property(3).expression = ‘comp(“knownSpecificCompNameGoesHere”).layer(“precomp”).effect(“Slider Control”)(“Slider”)’

I’m not sure how I’d go about it for an unknown comp name while implementing your suggestion. All my trial and error attempts so far have failed… How would you suggest constructing it so the actual name of the active comp could be added to the expression ? Thanks again for any further info.

[Dirk De jong]

bool ! bool ! bool !

after all that your only choice is to click “OK”… (seems unfair)

[Dirk De jong]

Thanks very much for the quick reply and useful suggestions. I’ll give these things a try.

[Dirk De jong]

BTW, using this as a method for disabling layers I’ve found that making a layer’s Opacity zero is not exactly the same as actually disabling the layer by clicking the little eyeball button in the timeline as far as performance optimization goes – maybe this is already widely known – but it’s unfortunate – I would kind of hope that if Opacity was zero (with no interpolation etc.) that it would be no slower than the disabled layer. In my case there were several effects applied to the transparent layer and those effects had expressions applied and those expressions were being triggered while adjusting the comp (so the parameters of the effects on the transparent layer were changing) – but that was also true with the eyeball turned off and it was much faster to adjust the comp with the truly disabled layer than the enabled but fully transparent layer – it seems like an unexploited possibility for an optimization in AE

also it might be nice if AE allowed for expressions to apply to a Layer’s enable/disable switch, a Layer’s Blend Mode, etc.

[Dirk De jong]

[Christian Simpson] “I was wondering if it’s possible for an if else statement to target an index from a popup controller?”

Yes, I’ve recently started doing that.

[Christian Simpson] “I was thinking I need to target the opacity parameter. Is this possible and if so how would you write that?”

something like this applied to Opacity parameter
if (comp(“COMP NAME”).layer(“LAYER NAME”).effect(“EFFECT NAME”)(“POPUP PARAM”)==1) 100 else 0;

the popup menu choices start at 1 as the topmost and 2 as the next down etc. so with the above expression the layer would be transparent unless the popup menu was set to the first choice (==1)

== is equal to and of course you can use other comparison operators as well (<, >, <=, >=, !=)