![]() If you want the animated parallax effect (very popular in documentary videos), you just animate the XYZ Position properties of the camera layer. At that point, if you want a still image, you’re basically done, just export. Next, you add a Light layer, and now you have a light source across all layers that darkens with distance and can cast shadows. ![]() That gets you automatic and realistic depth blur into the distance. Once that’s done, you just need to set up a Camera layer with the depth of field you want, and focus it on the closest object. Enable the 3D switch for all layers, and stagger the layers back in distance by adjusting each layer’s Z axis property (which I do by dragging/scrubbing). Drop that layered Photoshop file into After Effects, which can create a composition timeline with the layers preserved. In Photoshop, you split apart a photo into layers. (This was at a time before Photoshop added Smart Objects, and even today, Smart Objects are still more awkward to use than natively nondestructive layers). ![]() But what really drove me to After Effects for this over 20 years ago was that AE layers and effects are always nondestructive, and I really wanted to be able to make any change I wanted later. It’s a quick way to achieve the second example of a parallax effect for a still image in video, and it can be faster to set up and more visually consistent across layers than tweaking the blur, brightness, size, and perspective of each layer by hand in Photoshop. The key is that After Effects combines support for Photoshop layers with the ability to work in 3D relatively easily. Not sure about Final Cut Pro, but After Effects has been a go-to for this kind of work for decades. ![]()
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