- Adobe After Effects is arguably one of the most powerful creative tools (read: animation and visual effects software) available for professionals, particularly motion designers and VFX artists. If you’re a beginner or pro designer (does that even matter?), once you start to use After Effects religiously, you’ll recognize how super important it is to optimize your work.
In this article, we present our definitive list of the most important After Effects keyboard shortcuts, and what actions you can perform with them. You’ll spend less time opening right-click menus and hopping between tabs by memorizing these essential After Effects shortcuts. Remember, we’ll mainly be using three special keys (i.e., Command, Option and Shift) for all keyboard shortcuts on a Mac. So, here’s a quick note: if you’re working from a Windows PC, you’ll have to replace Command with Control and Alt with Option for this guide.