To get the most out of this book

Before beginning to use this book, you should have a working knowledge of your computer. You should know how to use the mouse and how to open, save, and close files.

After Effects CC is not included with this book. You need to purchase and install it. Some of the lessons in this book use Adobe Bridge, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Character Animator. You must install these programs from Adobe Creative Cloud.

To work through the projects in this book, you need to download the lesson files. The link is provided in the Technical requirements section of Chapter 2, Creating a Lower Third for a Television Show.

Download the color images

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/9781789345155_ColorImages.pdf.

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "Create a new 1920 x 1080 comp with a frame rate of 29.97."

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see on screen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: "Go to Layer | New | Solid, and change the color to blue."