Effects
Layer effects
Thirty-six effects, one stack. Every visual layer — text, image, video, shape, path, nested comp, caption — carries the same one, and every field on every card keyframes.
Add, reorder, keyframe
Add an effect from the inspector's effect menu on a selected layer; it drops in as a card in a reorderable stack. Drag a card up or down to change the order it processes in — each effect runs on the output of the one below it, so a blur above a colour grade softens the graded result, not the source. Every field on every effect keys the same way as any other property, including whether the effect is on — see Keyframe anything.
Presets, not parameter archaeology
Every card opens on a default that already reads on screen, and ships with presets on the same picker the rest of the app uses — pick a look, then take it apart. Save your own from any configured card and it appears beside them.
The catalog
Shadow & Glow
All four read the layer's actual painted silhouette, not its bounding box — a star casts a star.
| Effect | What it does |
|---|---|
| Drop shadow | An offset, coloured blur cast off the silhouette. |
| Inner shadow | Cast inward from the layer's own edge — recessed, letterpress. |
| Glow | Light leaving the layer, in its own colours by default, or turned inward. |
| Long shadow | A solid trail off the silhouette at any angle — flat-poster style. |
Blur & Sharpen
Motion blurs accumulate real samples rather than smearing a single frame, so they hold detail at the head of the streak.
| Effect | What it does |
|---|---|
| Layer blur | Gaussian-style softening of the whole layer. |
| Sharpen | Unsharp mask — brings detail back after a scale or a blur. |
| Directional blur | Smears along one angle: speed, whip pans, impact. |
| Zoom blur | Radial streaks out of a point — a dolly-in, a punch. |
| Spin blur | Smears around a centre instead of out from it. |
Colour
Stack as many as you like; each one processes the output of the card below it.
| Effect | What it does |
|---|---|
| Adjust | The quick filter block: brightness, contrast, saturation, hue, grayscale, sepia. |
| Color grade | A full grading node — lift/gamma/gain wheels, temperature, exposure, looks. |
| Gradient map | Remaps brightness onto a three-colour ramp — duotone, and any look built on one. |
| Posterize | Quantises to a few levels, with a dither that keeps the gradients alive. |
| Fill & gradient | Paints a colour or a ramp inside the layer's own shape, in any blend mode. |
| Vignette | Radial edge darken or lighten, fitted to the frame. |
Light & Optics
These ADD light rather than restyling what is already painted — they generate, so they animate on their own clock.
| Effect | What it does |
|---|---|
| Shine | A band of light that travels across the layer. |
| Light rays | Volumetric shafts thrown off the layer's own bright areas. |
| Lens flare | The camera's answer to a bright point — streak, halo, ghosts. |
| Lightning | A live electric arc — traces a shape's edge, fills it with arcs, or bolts and bursts between points. |
Distort
Every distortion is sampled at render resolution, so it stays clean when you export bigger than you previewed.
| Effect | What it does |
|---|---|
| Bulge | A lens you move over the layer — magnify or pinch. |
| Wave warp | A travelling wave folded into the layer — flags, jelly, heat haze. |
| Twirl | Spins the middle and leaves the edge alone. |
| Lens distortion | Barrel and pincushion, with the colour fringing that comes with them. |
| Roughen edges | Chews the outline — torn, burnt, chalky, rusted. |
| Glitch | The signal failing: bands tear, channels split, blocks swap. |
| RGB split | Pulls the red and blue channels apart — lens fringe, chromatic aberration. |
Film & Video
The time-varying family: their output changes frame to frame off a seeded clock, so they animate on a parked playhead — and export exactly what you previewed.
| Effect | What it does |
|---|---|
| Film grain | Emulsion noise with real gate timing — rate, jitter, stutter, seed. |
| Film damage | Dust, specks, scratches, hairs, flicker, gate weave and splice jumps. |
| Scanlines | A CRT mask: lines, dot triads, phosphor bleed, tube curve. |
| Noise | A procedural field you overlay — or let it warp the layer. |
Stylize
| Effect | What it does |
|---|---|
| Stroke | An outline traced around the layer's silhouette, inside, centre or out. |
| Bevel & emboss | Lights the layer's own edge as a slope — chisel, pillow, stamp. |
| Halftone | Redraws the layer as ink on a grid, and lets the ink scatter. |
| Pixelate | Resamples onto a coarse grid — mosaic, or an LED sign. |
| Chroma key | Cuts one colour out of the footage — green screen, per card. |
Material
| Effect | What it does |
|---|---|
| Liquid glass | Refracts and tints what is actually behind the layer, off a true distance field — refraction, depth, dispersion, frost, a directional light. |
Two of them get a page of their own: Color grading and Chroma key.
You only download what you use
The everyday cards — shadows, blur, glow, stroke, the adjust block — are in the editor from the start. Every other family loads as its own chunk the first time a document actually uses one, so a project with no lightning in it never pays for the lightning engine.
On the whole frame
With nothing selected, the frame's inspector carries the same stack — grain, a grade or a vignette over the finished picture. It is the same cards, on an adjustment layer that reaches everything, so it is a real clip you can trim, animate and scope rather than a hidden frame setting.
Driven by a tracker
A tracked region can generate its own scoped effect: one click gives you a “Blur region” or “B&W region” that follows the tracked object automatically, feather and all. See Motion tracking and Adjustment layers.
Feather, crop & radius
Feather, crop and border radius clip and soften a layer at the same seam this effect stack renders through, so they compose with any effect above for free. See Compositing & clipping.