Just like XMult, this plug-in will generate Alpha based on luminance of an image. It can be obtained when downloading the demo version for Knoll Light Factory or checking the free products category on the vendor’s web site.

Also originally a Puffin Designs product, after a short stay at Pinnacle Systems, who acquired the company, this plug-in set, which is probably the most versatile and most realistic lensflare generator on this planet, ended up here and luckily in good hands. Especially the introduction of hardware-accelerated routines made this previously rather slow rendering effect even more useful. Included are thefollowing effects:

• Light Factory – the complete tool with full customization options on a separate interface
• Light Factory EZ – simplified plug-in with only the preset flare types
• Light Factory Spectacular- filter that applies multiple flares to ares in your image, e.g. particles or specular highlights for those glam, glitter and bloom effects
• Unmult – creates Alpha based on the brightness of flares; also available as free download (see here)

For even more exotic looks, all elements that can constitute a lensflare, are provided separate effects (GlowBall, SpikeBall, StarFilter, Polygon Spread, Circle Spread, Elliptical Caustic, Star Caustic, Faded Ring, Stripe, Random Fan, Poly SpikeBall, Photon SpikeBall, Aperture Reflection, Chroma Hoop, Single Polygon, Disc, Ellipse, Sparkle, Chroma Fan) with individual animation controls.

Tip: To learn some basics about the inner workings of lensflares, download my free preset project here and study the associated tutorial on creativeCOW.

Apart from the Reshape filter and a few standalone shareware programs, this is pretty much your only option to get decent morphing inside After Effects as well as other programs like combustion* or Fusion. Using masks and a special odd/even stacking order, you can define source and target shapes and areas. You can further refine the alignment by animating the masks over time to acommodate changes in the footage.

• Morph – basic morph to transition from one still frame to another when the source and target are stationary
• Motion Morph – An advanced morph that will also detect the motion of your object and figure it in. A good example would for instance be a bird that flies across the screen and then transitions into a horse running on a meadow.
• Warp – "pull" pixels into a certain direction. Could be used e.g. to get rid of strong lens distortions by tracing curved edges in the footage and aligning them to straight target masks.

Adding an elementary functionality that AfterEffects does not provide natively, Meta DMA‘s plug-in provides a panel with video scopes. A similar tool can be found with Synthetic Aperture‘s Test Gear.

Note: Older versions compatible with previous releases of After Effects are available upon individual request, only the current version is actively being marketed.

GenArts started out by producing plug-ins for highend compositing systems like Autodesk flame* which are called Sparks, followed shortly after by versions for Avid systems. AfterEffects was added in 2004. While it may look like the entire company is just about one product(Sapphire), one should not forget that, depending on the platform, you get about 225 separate effects which represent easily the value of multiple collections. That availability on multiple systems and thus the possibility to get identical results everywhere is the strong point of this suite. In addition, the overall processing quality is excellent throughout. The antialiasing is one of the best I’ve seen in any plug-in and the internal calculations were based on floating point operations long before other manufacturers even thought about it. With version 5, native 32bit float processing inside After Effects has been added as well as acceleration by ways of CUDA on nVidia graphics cards.

As an After Effects user, you will have to make a clear decision whether or not getting the plug-ins makes sense for you or your facility. If you plan to replace the main programs’ own tools with tools from the collection for quality reasons and decide to make it an integral part of your core workflows, it will an enhance workflow experience, especially if your work is revolving around doing commercials, film work and quality HD productions that will benefit from the excellent processing quality and adjustment possibilities. If you are only an occasional user, you probably will decide to buy more selectively and only get the box that contains the effects you need for your projects and can’t do without.

To make purchasing more affordable and attractive to After Effects users (and other mainstream programs that support After Effects plug-ins),the overall collection is separated into 4 "boxes", which can be bought individually. This is different from other platforms, where you only can buy the entire suite, but you may also get a rental license per month for the duration of a project. The effects are too numerous to go into details, so just a listing of them below. For more details visit their website and download the demo.

Box 1: Lighting

Glow Effects:

Glow, GlowAura, GlowDarks, GlowDist, GlowEdges, GlowNoise, GlowOrthicon, GlowRainbow, GlowRings, Light Beams, Rays, EdgeRays, Streaks

Lens Flares:

LensFlare, LensFlareAutoTrack, Glints & Glares, Glint, GlintRainbow, Glare

Other Lighting:

DropShadow, SpotLight

Box 2: Stylize

Auto Paint & Half Tone:

AutoPaint, Sketch, Etching, HalfTone, HalfToneColor, HalfToneRings

Kaleidoscopes:

Kaleido:Triangles, Kaleido:Squares, Kaleido:Diamonds, Kaleido:Oct, KaleidoPolar, FlysEyeCircles, FlysEyeHex, FlysEyeRect

FilmEffect & Grain:

FilmEffect, Grain, GrainStatic, Diffuse

Edge Effects:

EdgeDetect, EdgeDetect:Chroma, EdgeDetectDouble, EdgesInDirection, EdgeColorize

Embossing:

Emboss, EmbossShiny, EmbossDistort, EmbossGlass

Other Stylize:

BandPass, JpegDamage, Mosaic, PseudoColor, PsykoBlobs, PsykoStripes, ScanLines, ScanLinesMono, Solarize,Zebrafy, ZebrafyColor, ZFogExponential, ZFogLinear

Box3: Adjust, Blur+Sharpen, Composite & Distort

Adjust:

ClampChroma,DuoTone, Gamma, Hotspots, HueSatBright, Monochrome, Threshold, Tint

Composite:

EdgeFlash, Layer, MathOps, MatteOps, MatteOpsComp, ZComp

Blur+Sharpen:

Blur, BlurChannels, BlurChroma, BlurMoCurves, BlurMotion, DefocusPrism, EdgeBlur, GrainRemove, RackDefocus, RackDfComp, Sharpen,SoftFocus, ZDepthCueBlur

DistortEffects:

Distort, DistortBlur, DistortChroma, DistortRGB

Warps & Shake:

WarpBubble,WarpBubble2, WarpChroma, WarpDrops, WarpFishEye, WarpPerspective, WarpPolar, WarpPuddle, WarpPuff, WarpRepeat, WarpTransform,WarpVortex, WarpWaves, WarpWaves2, Shake

Box4: Render, Time & Transitions

Lightning Zaps:

Zap, ZapTo, ZapFrom

Gradients & Grid:

Gradient, GradientRadial, Grid

Procedural Textures:

Sparkles, SparklesColor, TextureCells, TextureChromaSpiral, TextureFolded, TextureMoire, TextureNoiseEmboss, TextureNoisePaint, TexturePlasma, TextureSpots, TextureWeave, Fractal Clouds, Clouds, CloudsColorSmooth, CloudsMultColor, CloudsPerspective, CloudsPsyko, CloudsVortex

Time Effects:

Feedback, FeedbackBubble, FieldRemove, FreezeFrame, GetFrame, JitterFrames, MotionDetect, NearestColor, RandomEdits, ReverseClip, ReverseEdits, TimeAverage, TimeDisplace, TimeSlice, TimeWarpRGB, Trails, TrailsDiffuse

FlickerTools:

Flicker, FlickerMatch, FlickerMatchColor, FlickerMatchMatte, FlickerMchMatteColor, FlickerRemove, FlickerRemoveColor, FlickerRemoveMatte, FlickerRmMatteColor

DissolveTransitions:

DissolveBlur, DissolveBubble, DissolveDiffuse, DissolveLuma, DissolvePuddle, DissolveSpeckle, DissolveStatic, DissolveVortex, DissolveWaves

Wipe Transitions:

WipeBlobs, WipeBubble, WipeCells, WipeChecker, WipeCircle, WipeClock, WipeClouds, WipeDiffuse, WipeDots, WipeDoubleWedge, WipeFourWedges, WipeLine, WipePixelate, WipeRectangle, WipeRings, WipeStar, WipeStripes, WipeTiles, WipeWedge

For version 2.0 the following effects have been added to the package:

FilmDamage, ZDefocus, BlurDirectional,Cartoon, CartoonPaint, Posterize, BleachBypass, DogVision, Vignette, Deband, TileScramble, WarpMagnify, WarpCornerPin, GradientMulti, Shape, TextureFlux, TextureLoops, TextureNeurons, TextureTiles, SwishPan, DissolveGlow, DissolveFilm, FeedbackDistort,Convolve, ConvolveComp, ZConvolve, ZGlow, Light3D, TriTone, QuadTone, Invert, ShowBadColors, ChannelSwitcher

For version 5.0 the following effects have been added:

TVDamage, TVChannelChange,Technicolor2Strip, Technicolor3Strip, Swish3D, WipePlasma, WipePointalize, WipeWeave, WipeMoire, DissolveLensFlare, DissolveEdgeRays, DissolveGlint, DissolveGlintRainbow, DissolveDefocus, DissolveTiles, DissolveDistort

This is a simple image stabilization plug-in without any fancies. It simply scales the content up to compensate for the cropped edges after the stabilization .

The name says it all – add black bars and crop your footage for that cinematic look.

This plug-in attempts to mimic scribbly strokes based on fractal noise. Nothing you cannot do with plain After effects, as can be seen in the Looks and Styles section of my content site.

This plug-in removes noise from images by interpolating neighboring colors.

Ever wondered why cosmetics commercials seem to have that magic shine to them? Ever went crazy ‘cos fine details in images like grates, nets or even cloth structures gave you Moirépatterns? Ever cursed your 3D artist for flickering bump maps and flickering global illumination renders? Ever had trouble with DV artifacts in your footage? Then here’s a potential answer for you. Implementing a few different blur and convolution algorithms, SmoothKit tries to take care of those matters and many more. Of course all this blurring would do you no good if it was uniform across the entire image and damaged areas you don’t want to soften, so all filters can be controlled using a greyscale image or criteria from the surce footage to only work in certain areas.

• Diffusion – create uniformly colored areas by comparing pixels and applying the dominant color. Can be used for stylized artistical effects, blue screen/green screen smoothing or evening out lighting on planar surfaces (buildings, technical items)
• Directional Per Pixel- directional blur with supportfor curved motion
• Gaussian – a uniform Gaussian blur with separate control for horizontal and vertical ranges
• Gaussian Per Pixel – adaptive Gaussian blur. Mostly used for skin smoothing and artifact removal based on luminance.
• Staircase Suppress – iterative filter with a fixed convolution size to eliminate stairstepping at straight edges or in the difference areas between fields on interlaced footage
• Frame Accumulate- similar to CC Force Motionblur
• Viewer - little tool to make the channels used in the calculations visible similar to Shift Channels and other plug-ins

Along with renaming some effects to more properly reflect what they do, for version 2, several new effects have been added:

• Directional with Splines – blurs along the curvature of a mask spline or multiple mask paths
• Sharpen – sharpening tool similar to Unsharp Mask, but with more control
• ZBlur – depth-based blur for simulating DOF and similar effects