Hey, I'm Denis Stefanides

Co-founder of Spotlight FX, a plugin for Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro that helps video creators skip the boring and repetitive stuff and get back to real editing.

I've created this After Effects Expressions list as my go-to resource while I was working on templates for Spotlight FX.

Everyone has their own "storage" (Google Sheets, Notion, random files) but I realized a lot of the same expressions keep popping up, and it’s a pain to find or organize them. Most of the time, it’s just a mess of links and half-working expressions.

At first, I planned to include only the expressions I use, but expressions are kind of a community thing... You search for them, save them, reuse them. The problem is, most of the ones you find online either don’t work or lack context. You don’t know how to apply them, debug them, or adjust them for your needs.

That’s why I started building this. What began as a personal library became a public collection of useful expressions I’ve gathered from across the internet, all tested, cleaned up, and explained in simple terms. Every copy-paste-ready expression here works, and if you want to tweak something or learn how it works, I’ve written explanations underneath.

Yes, I use ChatGPT for some of the breakdowns, but if you’ve used it before, you know 50% of expressions are broken or incomplete. I test and improve them so what you see here are the final, working versions. Just browse and enjoy the workflow.

This After Effects expressions cheat sheet is meant to be a community resource. If you want to submit an expression or be featured, just reach out via @DenisStefanides on Twitter.

And if you feel like showing some love, check out my plugin Spotlight FX.