Tutorial: Creating a Fog Effect in Adobe After Effects CC 2015

Here is a short tutorial on creating a fog effect using Adobe After Effects CC 2015. You can use this fog effect to add some drama to your footage or alter the weather of your shot (Figure 1, below).

Figure 1. A fog effect applied. Click the image to see it at full size.

Importing Footage into After Effects

We’ll start by loading our video clip/footage loaded into After Effects. You can do this by navigating to File > Import and then selecting File. With our video added to the timeline, we can now start the process of creating the fog effect. We'll achieve this look by using adjustment layers. I covered adjustment layers in earlier tutorial that you can see here.

Applying a Tint Effect

Let’s add our first adjustment layer by navigating to Layer > New > Adjustment Layer (Figure 2, below). The first thing I’m going to do is apply a tint effect to this layer to give my video a black-and-white look for a dramatic effect. You don’t have to do this, but I think it looks much better with this fog effect we're creating.

Figure 2. Adding an adjustment layer.

Type in Tint into your Effects and Presets search field and you’ll see the Tint option (Figure 3, below). Click the effect and drag it to you adjustment layer.

Figure 3. Locating the Tint effect. Click the image to see it at full size.

If you've done this correctly, then you will see your footage change to black and white (Figure 4, below).

Figure 4. Black and white tint applied.

For housekeeping purposes, I'm going to change the name of this adjustment layer by selecting it in the timeline and then pressing Enter on that layer. Now, I can rename this layer to Black and White.