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An AE must-have: ft-Toolbar by Francois Tarlier

hebrides

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Hi there. Let me start off by saying that I have no vested interest in this script. I don't know Francois Tarlier, and I won't see a penny of whatever sales he gets.

That said, I think he's come up with quite possibly one of the best add-ons for After Effects that I've ever seen: ft-Toolbar . It's a cliché, but I think it applies in this case: this changes everything.

As its name suggests, it's a toolbar that you can install as a script. When you run the script, the toolbar appears in a new panel.

The toolbar allows you to access your most-often used effects simply and quickly. It's also infinitely customizable, so you can add new buttons with custom icons that allow you to do just about anything with AE, and some stuff with other programs. One of the preset buttons, for example, will open your calculator program in either Windows or MacOS.

Since I've spent a lot of time working on color correction, one of the first things I did was create a Photo Filter button. It's great for a couple of reasons:

1) It allows me to add a photo filter with one click instead of having to go to Effect -> Color Correction -> Photo Filter all the time, saving me extra steps.

2) If I click the button twice, I get two stacked photo filters, even if they are the only effects in the effects chain. This is huge for me, because in the past, I've always had to separate photo filters by a third effect (brightness/contrast in most cases), and then move the second photo filter up manually so that's it's above the third effect. Here, no third effect is needed.

Because of its flexibility, it could take a long, long time to explore all the possibilities for button configurations. One thing's for sure, though -- it should greatly speed up your work, which is always a Very Good Thing.

The toolbar is available as a free trial. If you like it -- and I suspect if you're planning to do any serious AE work, you will -- it's only about $16 US, tax included.

To give you an idea of how much I like this thing, I started the free trial and switched to paid mode almost immediately. It's that good.

To read more about the toolbar, check this out .

And here's a review of the toolbar, showing off how it works and some of the things you can do with it:

 
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