The Workspace in Adobe After Effects is extremely important to know and understand. When set up properly, your workflow speed and efficiency will increase.
One of the nice things about Adobe is all of their programs come standard with a couple of different workspace options for you to choose from.
You can see these different workspace options by revealing the drop down menu located in the upper right corner of the screen.
Each one of the options is specialized for a certain action that you can perform in After Effects. You can choose from the following:
- Animation
- Effects
- Minimal
- Motion Tracking
- Paint
- Standard
- Text
- Unlocked Panels
You'll want to experiment with the different workspace options available to figure out the similarities they share and the differences among them.
In the Standard view, the Project window is located on the far left side of the screen.
The Effects and Presets window is located on the far right side in the Effects view setting.
In the Minimal view, the Project window disappears completely. For your own personal settings, you'll probably want to figure out a configuration that's somewhere between Minimal and Standard.
Each workspace setting is designed to be set up for specific actions, so whichever workspace you choose will show those windows associated with the particular workspace chosen.
You can easily move any window panel by clicking and dragging it around your desktop to wherever you like.
To create a custom workspace, choose any window you would like to open by navigating to the top menu bar and clicking Window. You will then have the ability to choose any of the available windows to either view or hide.
You can also create a New Workspace and save your customized window settings that you choose.