From the course: After Effects Compositing: 3 Advanced Matching and Looks

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Set guide layers to solve workflow problems

Set guide layers to solve workflow problems

If you're not already in the habit of making liberal use of guide layers, this lesson may help convince you why and how to set them all the time. Whether to add reference or actually to solve render pipeline problems. In another movie, you may have noticed that I set the background in a pre-comp to be a guide layer. I like to do that just by right-clicking and choosing guide layer to toggle so I can toggle it on and off right here. Once it's on, I guarantee that any layer that has it applied doesn't appear in a downstream comp. So that is the first advantage of a guide layer, I can add a layer that won't show up when it is nested into another comp. Now, you can see that that same background appears in this comp. The reason I needed a guide layer is that I'm also applying a box blur for a defocus effect. So in this layer, only the board shows up. The background is a separate layer that I've reinserted here. That's one excellent for a guide layer, but there are others. You may have also…

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