The Curve Editor

The Curve Editor is a visual bezier canvas for shaping easing. Open it from the ▼ Editor disclosure on the Animate tab. The horizontal axis is normalized time (0 → 1); the vertical axis is value (0 → 100).

Two ways to edit a curve

The panel's Curve Editor and the control-layer slider keyframes are two views of the same data. Edit in either place and the other reflects your change.

• Through the panel: open ▼ Editor, reshape the curve visually, and click ✓ Update Curve to commit the change to the active slider — or ＋ Add As New Curve to save your edit as a fresh slider, leaving the original untouched.
• Directly on the control layer: select the CurveConductor layer, press U to reveal the curve sliders, and edit the 0–100 keyframes in After Effects' graph editor exactly as you would any other property. Whatever you sculpt here is what the panel's editor shows next time you select that curve.

Both paths are first-class. Use the panel editor for quick visual passes; jump to the graph editor when you want native fine-tuning, snapping, or to copy/paste handles between sliders.

Reading the canvas

• Nodes are diamonds along the curve — you can think of them as curve nodes you sculpt, rather than animation keyframes. White nodes are selected; gray nodes are not.
• Handles are the tangent lines from a node, controlling curvature into and out of it.
• The first and last nodes are locked to (time 0, value 0) and (time 1, value 100), so the curve always spans the full move. You can still adjust their handles.

Editing with the mouse

Action	Result
Click a node	Select / deselect it.
Shift + click node	Add to / remove from a multi-selection.
Drag a node	Move it (middle nodes only).
Drag a handle	Adjust the tangent curvature for that segment.
Drag the curve line	Pull the curve, adjusting both surrounding handles at once.
Ctrl / ⌘ + click empty canvas	Add a node at the nearest point on the curve.
Ctrl / ⌘ + click a node	Delete that node.
Alt / ⌥ + click a broken node	Re-link its in/out tangents (average their directions).

Editor buttons & sizing

• Update Curve — write the current editor shape back to the selected curve. Everything using it re-times.
• Add As New Curve — save the editor shape as a brand-new curve on the control layer (this comp only), leaving the original untouched.
• Save as Preset — save the current editor shape as a reusable custom preset. It appears alongside the built-in presets on the Presets tab and is available in every comp and project. See Custom presets.
• Undo — step back through edits made inside the editor.
• S / M / L set the editor height; the zoom icons ( / ) adjust vertical scale (helpful for overshoot/anticipation beyond the 0–100 range), with a reset () button.

Editor undo ≠ AE undo

The editor's Undo only reverts changes within the editor. Use After Effects' own Ctrl+Z for applies, removes, blends, and bakes. Closing the panel does not roll back unsaved editor edits — commit them with Update Curve or Add As New Curve first.