Are you a marketing person looking for an affordable way to create a polished video that represents your company? Are you a budding filmmaker who wants to insert some graphics into your film but don’t know where to start? After effects templates are a great tool that can give your films a professional, appealing look. What exactly are ae templates, where can you find them, and how can you use them?

Defining After Effects Templates

The Small Business Chronicle explains, “After Effects templates are after effects project files created by professionals that can be edited to suit your requirements.” This means that you can insert beautiful effects into your videos without having to hire a motion graphics designer or commission pricey visual effects. Keep in mind that the term “After Effects templates” usually refers exclusively to templates compatible with Adobe programs.

Where to Find Them

No matter what your project is, you’re likely to be able to find After Effects templates to suit it. A variety of video templates sites offer things like infographics, multiscreen templates, intro templates, wedding templates, business presentation templates, opening and closing credits templates, and a host of other selections. You can preview the templates before you buy. Pay close attention to the descriptions; these tell you what about the video templates you can edit and if you need any plugins.

Additionally, besides Adobe After Effects Templates, there is also the option of using Apple Motion templates, which achieves largely the same effect and purpose.

How to Use Them

You’ll need to purchase Adobe After Effects Creative Cloud before you get started on editing your templates. While the program can seem intimidating at first, it shouldn’t take you too long to learn the basics.

There are some great online video tutorials that show you how to use the After Effects program, but here are some pointers to get you started:

  • From the drop down “file” menu, select the “import” option so you can get your template or video into Adobe After Effects.
  • Use the “composition” menu to start working on your project.
  • The time controls, which let you pause and play the video, start out on the right-hand side of the window, but you can move them around so the configuration is comfortable for you.
  • You can select portions of the video to create and edit a mask, though that should not be necessary when you already have a template in hand.
  • You should find an option to edit text in the lower left-hand quarter of the Adobe window, where you can isolate the text layer. From there, you can change the wording, font type, and font size using the menu on the right-hand side.

Of course, Adobe’s program is constantly moving forward, so the location of options may change, but once you get a feel for how to edit templates, you shouldn’t have a hard time adjusting to upgrades in the program.

Video templates, available from online stock assets sites like MotionElements, are great tools for filmmakers, business and marketing professionals, video content creators and anyone else who wants to put together a sleek presentation. Learning how to use them can take your projects to the next level.

Check out our latest After Effects templates