Composing text

The appearance of text on the page depends on a complex interaction of processes called text composition. Using the word spacing, letter spacing, and glyph spacing options you've selected, After Effects evaluates possible line breaks and chooses the one that best supports the specified parameters.

After Effects offers two composition methods: the Adobe Every-line Composer and the Adobe Single-line Composer. Both composition methods evaluate possible breaks and choose the one that best supports the justification options you've specified for a given paragraph.

The Every-line Composer

Considers a network of break points for a range of lines and thus can optimize earlier lines in the paragraph in order to eliminate especially unattractive breaks later on. Working with multiple lines of text results in more even spacing and fewer hyphens.

The Every-line composer approaches composition by identifying possible breakpoints, evaluating them, and assigning a weighted penalty based on these principles:

• Highest importance is given to evenness of letter and word spacing. Possible breakpoints are evaluated and penalized according to how much they deviate from optimal spacing.
• After breakpoint penalty values are identified for a range of lines, they are squared, magnifying the bad breakpoints. The composer then uses the good breakpoints.

The Single-line Composer

Offers a traditional approach to composing text one line at a time. This option is useful if you prefer to have manual control over how lines break. If spacing must be adjusted, the Single-line composer first tries to compress, rather than expand text.

To choose a composition method for a paragraph:

Choose Adobe Every-line Composer or Adobe Single-line Composer from the Paragraph palette menu. A checkmark indicates which option is selected.