Basic project setup
For our sample project, we’ll create a composition that simulates a magnify on a layer, in this case magnifying the words on a fictitious newspaper, using a mask, two layers and a simple Expression. (You can download my sample project by clicking here.)

To do this, we’ll have two layers on top of a black canvas: a newspaper layer at reduced size (“newspaperbg”) and a magnified duplicate of the newspaper layer in the foreground (“newspaperforeground”).

I’ll scale the foreground up to about 180 percent for my magnify effect, and I’ll make it into a 3D layer and angle it just a little bit (X Rotation -24, Y Rotation +27) to add a little interest. And I’ll turn down the opacity of the background layer (“newspaperbg”) to about 34 percent to de-emphasize it. Something like this:

To my foreground layer I’ll add my elliptical mask and feather the mask by 10 pixels.