How to Animate Photos in After Effects

How to Animate Photos in After Effects

A still composite can be made to move without animating anything in it. Separate the image into its layers, space them apart in 3D, and fly a camera through them — near objects sweep past quickly, distant ones drift slowly, and the flat picture reads as a three-dimensional scene.

This is the parallax effect, sometimes called 2.5D, and it is one of the most effective things you can do with a layered Photoshop file. The work is mostly preparation; the animation itself is a couple of keyframes.

Preparing the File in Photoshop

After Effects needs each element as its own image with transparency around it. That means exporting your layers individually.

1. Resize the composite to something manageable

   Around 2700 x 2700 pixels is plenty. Full-resolution files make After Effects sluggish for no visible benefit at video output sizes.

2. Hide every layer except one

   Work through them one at a time.

3. Go to File, then Export, then Export As

   Choose PNG and make sure transparency is enabled.

4. Export at the full document size every time

   This is the critical part — see below.

5. Name files in order

   01_background, 02_midground and so on. You will be reassembling them and the order matters.

6. Note any blend modes as you go

   Blend modes do not survive the PNG export. Set any Screen, Soft Light or Lighten layer back to Normal before exporting it, and add the mode to the end of its file name so you know what to reapply in After Effects.

Why full canvas size matters

If you export each layer cropped to its own content, every PNG has different dimensions and lands in After Effects centerd in the frame — so a bird that was in the top corner arrives in the middle, and you have to reposition everything by eye.

Exporting each layer at the full document size means every file carries its position within the transparent area. Import them and they land exactly where they belong, perfectly stacked. This one detail saves a great deal of tedious repositioning.

Importing into After Effects

Import all the PNGs and create a new composition from the footage, which brings them in as a stack of layers.

Reverse the stacking order

Layers usually import in the opposite order to the one you want — your background at the top, your foreground at the bottom. Select them and cut and paste to reverse the stack so the front-most element sits at the top of the timeline, as it did in Photoshop.

Check this against your original before going further. Sorting it out now is trivial; noticing after you have positioned everything in 3D is not.

Then reapply any blend modes you noted. If the blend mode column is not visible, toggle it at the bottom of the timeline panel.

Turning the Layers 3D

Each layer has a small 3D checkbox in the timeline. Tick it for every layer.

Nothing appears to change, and that is expected — the layers are now in three-dimensional space but all still sitting at the same depth. Until you separate them and add a camera, a 3D layer looks exactly like a 2D one.

Positioning in Z Space

Now push the layers apart in depth. Select a layer and adjust its Z position — negative values bring it toward the camera, positive values push it away.

Scale to compensate

Moving a layer back makes it smaller, because that is what perspective does. To keep the composition looking like the original, scale each layer up as you move it away. Press S to open the scale property.

Hold Ctrl or Cmd while dragging a scale value for finer control — the default increments are too coarse for this.

The aim is a stack that looks essentially identical to your flat composite when viewed head-on, but is genuinely spread through space.

Use the top-down view

Switch the viewer to a top or custom view and you can see your layers arranged in depth like cards standing in a row. This makes the whole thing far easier to reason about than nudging Z values while staring at the front view.

Separate them more than feels necessary

The strength of the parallax comes entirely from how far apart the layers sit. Timid spacing produces a barely perceptible effect. Push them further than seems sensible, preview the camera move, and pull back if it is too much — that is a much better path than starting subtle.

Animating the Camera

Add a new camera — Layer, then New, then Camera. In the camera settings, type in a Focal Length of 80mm: not too zoomed in and not too wide.

Then animate its position rather than moving the layers. Set a keyframe for the camera’s position at the start, move to the end of your timeline, and set another with the camera pushed forward, or drifted sideways, or both.

Press the spacebar to preview. The layers should now shift relative to each other with real depth.

Always ease the keyframes

Linear keyframes give a mechanical move that stops abruptly. Select the end keyframes and go to Animation > Keyframe Assistant > Easy Ease In, so the move slows down as it arrives.

This single step is the difference between an animation that looks like a computer moved something and one that looks like a camera move. It takes one menu command and it matters more than almost anything else here.

Slower than you think

Parallax reads best as a slow drift. A move that takes six or eight seconds to cross the scene is usually more effective than a fast push, because the viewer has time to register the depth.

The Gap Problem

As soon as the camera moves off-center, you will see behind your foreground layers — and there is nothing there, because those areas were hidden in the original photograph. Elements appear to have holes punched behind them.

The fix is back in Photoshop. Extend the layers behind your foreground elements so there is content to reveal — either by cloning, or with Generative Fill, which handles this particularly well since it only needs to extend an existing background.

How much to extend depends on how far the camera travels. Preview the move, note where the gaps appear, then go back and fill only those areas rather than guessing.

It is worth expecting this rather than being surprised by it. Nearly every parallax animation needs one return trip to Photoshop.

Exporting

Set any layers you changed back to Normal blend mode if they were only for preview, then add the composition to the Render Queue.

H.264 is the right format for anything going to the web or social media — good quality at a sensible file size and supported everywhere. Choose your output location and render.

While you are working, drop the preview resolution to half or third. Full-resolution previews on a large composite are slow, and you do not need them until the final check.

Getting Good Results

The two things that most affect the outcome are both decided before you animate: how cleanly the layers were separated in Photoshop, and how far apart you spaced them in Z. A well-prepared file with generous depth separation will look good with the simplest possible camera move.

Once that works, animating individual layers as well — a slow drift on a cloud, a slight rotation on a foreground element — adds another degree of life. But get the parallax right first; it does most of the work on its own.

Quick Reference: Keys, Menus and Settings

• Export each layerPhotoshop: File > Export > Export As, PNG with Transparency, full document size, numbered from the back
• Build the compNew Composition From Footage; Cmd/Ctrl + X, then Cmd/Ctrl + V to reverse the order
• Make them 3DWith all layers selected, click the 3D Layer box; Columns > Modes to reapply blend modes
• Add the cameraLayer > New > Camera, Focal Length 80mm; right-click the viewer > Switch View Layout > 2 Views
• Space the layersMove each layer in Z, then S for Scale; hold Cmd/Ctrl while dragging for finer steps
• AnimateStopwatch on Camera Position at the start and end; Animation > Keyframe Assistant > Easy Ease In; Spacebar to preview
• RenderFile > Export > Add to Render Queue, H.264, Output To, Render