Paint tools: Brush, Clone Stamp, and Eraser

The Brush tool , Clone Stamp tool , and Eraser tool are all paint tools. You use each in the Layer panel to apply paint strokes to a layer. Each paint tool applies brush marks that modify the color or transparency of an area of a layer without modifying the layer source.

Each paint stroke has its own duration bar, Stroke Options properties, and Transform properties, which you can see and modify in the Timeline panel. Each paint stroke is, by default, named for the tool that created it, with a number that indicates the order in which it was drawn.

At any time after you draw a paint stroke, you can modify and animate each of its properties using the same techniques that you use to modify the properties and duration of a layer. You can copy paint stroke path properties to and from properties for mask paths, shape layer paths, and motion paths. For even more power and flexibility, you can link these properties using expressions. (See Creating shapes and masks and Add, edit, and remove expressions.)

Individual brush marks are distributed along each paint stroke—though the marks may appear to merge together to form a continuous stroke with the default settings. Brush settings for each brush in the Brushes panel determine the shape, spacing, and other properties of brush marks; you can also modify these Stroke Options properties for each stroke in the Timeline panel.

In After Effects, paint strokes are vector objects, which means that they can be scaled up without loss of quality. Paint strokes in some applications, such as Photoshop, are raster objects. (See About vector graphics and raster images.)

Groups of paint strokes appear in the Timeline panel as instances of the Paint effect. Each instance of the Paint effect has a Paint On Transparent option. If you select this option, the layer source image and all effects that precede this instance of the Paint effect in the effect stacking order are ignored; the paint strokes are applied on a transparent layer.

Chris and Trish Meyer give tips for using After Effects paint tools, including the Clone Stamp tool, in an article on the ProVideo Coalition website.

• To show paint strokes on selected layers in the Timeline panel, press PP.
• To select paint strokes in the Layer panel, use the Selection tool to click a paint stroke or drag a box around portions of multiple paint strokes.

• To show only selected paint strokes in the Timeline panel, select paint strokes and press SS.
• To rename a paint stroke, select the paint stroke in the Timeline panel and press Enter on the main keyboard (Windows) or Return (Mac OS); or right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) the name and choose Rename.
• To reorder paint strokes within an instance of the Paint effect, drag a Paint stroke to a new location in the stacking order in the Timeline panel.
• To reorder an instance of the Paint effect to interleave it with other effects, drag the effect to a new location in the stacking order in the Timeline panel.
• To target a specific instance of the Paint effect for the addition of new paint strokes, choose from the View menu at the bottom of the Layer panel.
• To hide a paint stroke from view (and from rendered output), deselect the Video switch for the paint stroke.
• To open or close the Paint panel and Brushes panel when a paint tool is selected, click the Toggle The Paint Panels button .

To use the Paint panel, first select a paint tool from the Tools panel.

To use the Brushes panel, first select a paint tool from the Tools panel.

• To create a new preset brush, specify the desired settings in the Brushes panel, and then choose New Brush from the Brushes panel menu or click the Save Current Settings As New Brush button .
• To rename a preset brush, select the brush and choose Rename Brush from the panel menu.
• To delete a preset brush, choose Delete Brush from the panel menu or click the Delete Brush button .
• To restore the default set of preset brushes, choose Reset Brush Tips from the Brushes panel menu. To retain the custom brushes you created, click Append when the dialog box prompts you to replace current brushes with the default brushes.

Use the Brush tool to paint on a layer in the Layer panel with the current foreground color.

Do any of the following with the Brush tool active:

• To select a foreground color with the Color Picker, click the Set Foreground Color button in the Paint panel.
• To select a foreground color from anywhere on the screen with the eyedropper, select the eyedropper in the Paint panel and then click to sample the color under the pointer. Ctrl-click (Windows) or Command-click (Mac OS) to sample the average color of a 3-pixel by 3-pixel square.

• To switch the foreground color with the background color, press X or click the Switch Foreground And Background Colors button .
• To reset the foreground color and background color to black and white, press D.

You can paint on individual frames over a series of frames to create an animation or to obscure unwanted details in your footage.

You can use the Clone Stamp tool to copy pixel values from one place and time and apply them at another place and time. For example, you can use the Clone Stamp tool to remove wires by copying from a clear patch of sky, or you can create a herd of cows from one cow in the source footage and offset the copies in time.

The Clone Stamp tool samples the pixels from a source layer and applies the sampled pixel values to a target layer; the target layer can be the same layer or a different layer in the same composition. If the source layer and target layer are the same, the Clone Stamp tool samples paint strokes and effects in the source layer, in addition to the layer source image.

This video from the After Effects: Learn By Video series shows how to combine motion tracking and the Clone Stamp tool to remove an object from a scene.

Angie Taylor provides a tutorial on the Digital Arts website that shows how to use tracking data and the Clone Stamp tool to apply copies of an object in a scene while matching a camera move.

As with all paint tools, you use the Clone Stamp tool in the Layer panel.

You can identify what result a stroke will have before you make it by using the clone source overlay, a semi-transparent image of the source layer.

Select Aligned in the Paint panel to make the position of the sample point (Clone Position) change for subsequent strokes to match the movement of the Clone Stamp tool in the target Layer panel. In other words, with the Aligned option selected, you can use multiple strokes to paint on one copy of the sampled pixels. In contrast, deselecting the Aligned option causes the sample point to stay the same between strokes, meaning that you begin painting on pixels from the original sample point each time you drag again to create a new clone stroke.

For example, select Aligned to use multiple clone strokes to copy one whole cow—which would be difficult to do in one continuous stroke—and deselect Aligned to copy one flower into dozens of places in the target layer to make a field of flowers, using one clone stroke per copy.

Select Lock Source Time to clone a single source frame (at composition time Source Time); deselect Lock Source Time to clone subsequent frames, with a time offset (Source Time Shift) between the source frame and the target frame. The clone source time automatically loops back to the starting sample point when the current sampling point goes beyond the end of the duration of the source layer. This looping is especially helpful when you have a lot of frames to repair in the target layer but only a few good frames in the source layer.

Each clone stroke includes properties in the Timeline panel that are unique to the Clone Stamp tool and correspond to settings made in the Paint panel before the clone stroke is created:

After clone strokes have been created, their properties in the Timeline panel can be modified and animated. For example, you can clone a bird flying across the screen by cloning it in one frame, tracking the motion of the bird, and then linking the Clone Position property to the Attach Point property of tracker with an expression.

Use clone presets to save and reuse clone source settings: Source Layer, Aligned, Lock Source Time, Source Time Shift, Offset, and Source Position values. Clone presets are saved in the preferences file, so they can be reused in other projects. To work with clone presets, first select the Clone Stamp tool.

• To select a clone preset, press 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7 on the main keyboard, or click a Clone Preset button in the Paint panel.
• To modify a clone preset, select it and adjust the Clone Options settings as desired.
• To copy the settings from one clone preset to another, select the clone preset from which to copy, and Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click (Mac OS) the Clone Preset button for the clone preset to which you want to paste the settings.

If you use the Eraser tool in Layer Source & Paint or Paint Only mode, it creates Eraser strokes that can be modified and animated. In contrast, using the Eraser tool in Last Stroke Only mode only affects the last paint stroke drawn and does not create an Eraser stroke.

You animate a paint stroke by setting keyframes or expressions for its properties. After Effects animates paint stroke properties—even the Path property of a paint stroke—by interpolating values for all frames between keyframes.

By modifying and animating the Start and End properties of a paint stroke, you can control how much of a stroke is shown at any time. For example, by automatically animating the End property from 0% to 100% with the Write On setting, you can make a paint stroke appear to be drawn on over time.

As with all properties, you can link paint stroke properties to other properties using expressions. For example, you can make a paint stroke follow a moving element in your footage by tracking the moving element and then linking the Position property of the paint stroke to the Attach Point property of the tracker.

Rotoscoping is a special case of painting or drawing on individual frames in which some item in the frame is being traced. Often, rotoscoping refers to drawing animated masks rather than paint strokes. (See Rotoscoping introduction and resources.)

Scott Squires provides a pair of movies on his Effects Corner website that show how to rotoscope, both painting and masking:

• Rotoscoping - Part 1

• Rotoscoping - Part 2

If you choose Write On from the Duration menu in the Paint panel, the End property is automatically animated to match the motion that you used to draw the stroke.