Mark Christiansen received Adobe Press’ OK to write a book contributed to After Effects 7 Studio Techniques. THe result is a book that covers techniques for advanced users. No introductions to the interface and such basics here, but an immediate jump in the deep end.

The book starts with a background of compositing for realism. This is where the book heads in the next chapters: using After Effects to get realistic effects. Christiansen first takes you by the hand, with a high-speed overview of the foundations of After Effects.

He then goes on to explain the more in-depth features, such as the nodes view, and explains why and how these differ from other high-end compositing systems — Shake is mentioned a couple of times.

From then on, everything that you need to know to composite with After Effects, is covered. Selections as key to compositing, gamma, colour, colour keying, creating and using mattes, rotoscoping, painting and morphing, it’s all covered and all covered from start to finish. The book uses small projects to teach you how to achieve the compositing effects the author discusses.

The most difficult part to grasp was the part on conditionals and expressions. There, you must really know how After Effects works and what you can do with it, otherwise you’ll be lost.

The book contains a Mac/Windows DVD containing the sample projects, HD footage from Artbeats, as well as demo versions of plug-ins to build up and customize your own effects.