As with each Classroom in a Book, Adobe has kept the basic concept and flow: each chapter has exercises, so that you feel like you’re in a real classroom. 

The book starts with the easy and delves deeper into After Effects with each project-based chapter. There are various projects that are followed through to a working end.

The book covers everything that you can do with After Effects 7. It covers animation with effect presets, the integration with Adobe Bridge and layered Illustrator files.

After Effects 7 lets you export to Flash, which deserves a chapter in this Classroom in a Book. Further special coverage is given to animating text, multimedia presentations, masking and keyframing motion paths, and much more.

Separate chapters deal with animating layers, creating track mattes, and using Graph Editor to remap time. The creation of masks is shown by way of a TV-presentator that must be composited into a computer LCD screen. In the chapter following this one, green screen (or keying) is tackled. Of course, the book pays ample attention to colour correction, and colour balance.

It also pays attention to building (!) and animating 3D objects with After Effects 7. The After Effects camera gets its first discussion here, with a more in-depth discussion of the camera in the chapter on motion stabilisation, motion tracking and particle creation.