From the course: After Effects CS5 Essential Training

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Selecting layers quickly

Selecting layers quickly

When you start having comps with tons of layers like this it could become really tedious trying to find the layer you want to select it, to say to add effects or to adjust it or something, and adjusting the Timeline panel like this every time you want to access the layer is really annoying and takes away from your workflow. So, I am going to give you two quick tips for selecting layers quickly. Number one, you will notice that in the Timeline panel there is a Number column here, and it gives you the number of the layer. And each layer is assigned a number in that order. And if you were to click and drag to reassign these, obviously the numbers would change. But if you wanted to select a certain layer and you knew the number of the layer, you could simply type that number on the numeric keypad. So, if I want to apply, for example, an effect to the sword layer, I could simply type 5 on the numeric keypad, and then just double-click the effect in the Effects and Presets panel. To select…

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