After Effects and Photoshop go hand in hand....

When I started using After Effects, I was quickly working out how to use it even though I felt clueless at the start, it was the fact that the set up was very similar, for example the way you could edit a layer on that programme instead of switching between the two which was so much more efficient.

There was the effects option at the right hand side of the screen...
This is where you could add an effect and presets to the animation once it's been rendered and saved.
Images could be brough up separately so you could edit a frame and replace it back into the timline. Shown in the second image below.                    

I didn't realise that you could do this on the programme initially and it made my life so much more easier because I wasn't wasting my time by switching between to programmes and fiddling around which wastes time.