How to Make Custom Presets in After Effects

Creating custom presets in Adobe After Effects is straightforward and requires no coding knowledge.

Hold Shift, select all the keyframes, effects, and properties you want to turn into a preset. Then click the Create New Animation Preset icon in the Effects & Presets panel. Give it a name and that's it!

Create new animation preset button

After Effects automatically saves presets as .ffx files, which can then be applied to selected layers. When applied, all the keyframes, effects, and expressions will be applied to the selected layer. The keyframes will be applied relative to where the Current Time Indicator is within the comp.

What You Can Preset

Keyframes
Effects
Expressions
Any combination of the above

Presets can even create shape layers, like our Bounding Box tool.

When to Use Presets

Use presets when you find yourself repeatedly:

Copying and pasting the same keyframes
Applying the same effect combinations
Writing the same expressions
Developing shareable tools for other After Effects users

If you create a cool preset, you can even share it on Gumroad.