[Greg Gesch]

Hi Bianca, I’m having trouble visualising what you are doing/wanting. Can you post a screen grab of what you have?

[Greg Gesch]

Hi. I suspect what you want is the Colorama Effect.

[Greg Gesch]

Maybe a better idea to try first: Import the Photoshop PSD file into After Effects. ‘Import As: Composition – Retain Layer Size’ . Then open the composition and you can access the content as layers. That might work for you?

[Greg Gesch]

OK, one way to do it:
Go to ‘View’ at the top of your screen, toggle it open and select ‘Show Rulers’.
Move your cursor over the rulers (it will turn into a double headed arrow). Click and drag a ruler to the very edge of your image, then do the same 3 more times so that you end up with a square or rectangle exactly enclosing your image.
Using your Pen tool create a shape layer by drawing a 1 pixel diagonal line (no fill), from just outside the corners of your square/rectangle. Draw another line going in the opposite direction – you now have a cross through your square/rectangle. Zoom in and make sure the lines are exactly crossing the rulers corners. (Don’t try to create a vertex on the ruler lines, you’ll drive yourself crazy. Try it and you’ll see why.)
Then use the Pan Behind tool to move the centre point to the centre of the X.
That should do what you need?

[Greg Gesch]

Mmmmm, very hard to explain. If I read you correctly you want the bounding box’s centre point to be in two different positions at the same time – you want the anchor point in the centre of the circle/image and at the same time for the bounding box to be centred in the composition so the image is off centre. As far as I know the centre of the bounding box is always going to be the centre of the bounding box. After Effects doesn’t see the circle/image as a separate entity, it only sees the whole 1080 x 1080 shape.
You are right, if the bounding box is at the exact edges of the image it will be centered, but that means that the image must fill the ‘canvas’ with no space around it – and it will import into the centre of your composition, which is not where you want it.
I’ll try to put my mind to an easy way of finding the exact centre of your circle/image but, no, there is no one click way of doing it – but I’m very happy to be contradicted by any of the clever people here.

[Greg Gesch]

Hi TJ. There is a tool called the Pan Behind tool, which is under the word ‘Layer’ at the top of your screen – next to the camera icon. Select it and then you can drag the Anchor Point from the middle of your image up to its correct position in the centre of the circle. This means that it will rotate from the centre of the circle. Don’t confuse this with moving the Anchor Point under the Transform options, which will offset the image away from the anchor point. Look up the pan behind tool in help, it is useful to know about when rotating or scaling.

[Greg Gesch]

Hi Danny. There are a lot of ways of doing this but using your current knowledge:
Make separate masks for each slice (you can have more than one mask on a layer).
The masks can overlap at the top so that there aren’t any gaps.
Keyframe the Mask Paths to have them slide into position.
Let us know if this is unclear.

[Greg Gesch]

Hi Chris. I would start with the Cartoon Effect for the outlined feeling – the water colour wash effects I’ll have to leave for someone else to chime in on.

[Greg Gesch]

Hi. You would be better off using the Shatter effect which allows you to use shatter maps etc. It’s a complex effect and probably requires a bit of research and fiddling to get it to do exactly what you want it to.

[Greg Gesch]

Hi. I would duplicate the image, mask out the crumbled area and copy the mask to the second version, invert the upper layer’s mask – you now have the whole image again. Then to the lower layer add either the CC Pixel Polly effect or the Shatter effect (which is far more flexible).