GlowEngine

About this plugin

Apply GlowEngine to a layer from Effect > Stylize. The glow is worked out in linear light, so bright areas spread and mix the way real light does, and Radius, Exposure, Falloff and Core Size shape it. Chromatic Aberration and separate red, green and blue radii fringe it with colour, and Aspect Ratio and Angle stretch it for anamorphic looks. Pick what glows with a threshold on luminance, the brightest channel or each channel, or with a mask layer. Switch the glow type to Image Kernel for a star with 4, 6 or 8 points, a disc, or any layer as the shape, or use both at once. Add lens dirt from a layer, tint the glow from an inner to an outer colour, and tone map the result with Reinhard, Filmic (Hable), ACES or AgX so highlights roll off instead of clipping. The physical glow renders on the GPU (CUDA on NVIDIA, OpenCL on AMD and Intel) and image kernels on every CPU core, in 8, 16 and 32 bpc, with Multi-Frame Rendering. For After Effects on Windows: copy GlowEngine.aex into After Effects' Plug-ins folder and restart After Effects.

What it does

• Physical glow in linear light: Radius, Exposure, Falloff and Core Size
• Image kernels: Star 4, Star 6, Star 8, Disc, or any layer as the shape
• Physical + Kernel: both glows at once
• Chromatic aberration, and separate red, green and blue radii
• Aspect Ratio and Angle for stretched, anamorphic glows
• Threshold on luminance, the brightest channel or each channel, with softness
• A mask layer decides what glows: alpha, luma or inverted
• Tint from an inner to an outer colour, multiplied or colorized
• Lens dirt from any layer, with a Clean Glow amount
• Tone mapping: Reinhard, Filmic (Hable), ACES and AgX
• Add, Screen or Lighten over the source, or view the glow alone
• GPU rendering with CUDA (NVIDIA) and OpenCL (AMD, Intel)
• 8, 16 and 32 bpc, Multi-Frame Rendering, and dither against banding
• Draft quality for fast previews, High for the final render