Image effects

Image effects restyle the picture on a shape: print it as halftone dots, dither it into a few colors, look at it through ribbed glass or water, crumple it like paper, split its colors or glitch it. Stack several, change their order, and keyframe their settings.

Where to find it: Image effects in the Panel Fill section, with a shape selected that has a picture, a video or a shader fill.

Add an effect

Select a shape with a picture or video on it, or with a shader fill. See Images and video and Shader fills.
In the Panel Fill section, under Fill, open Add effect… next to Image effects and pick one.
Click the effect's name to open its settings.

Two effects in the chain, Halftone Dots open, with its parts numbered

Add effect…: adds another effect to the end of the chain.
The checkbox: turns the effect off and on. Its settings are kept while it's off.
▲ ▼: moves it earlier or later in the chain.
×: removes it.
Variation: a ready-made starting point. Picking one starts again from its values.
Resolution: how sharp the effect is drawn, 512 px, 1024 px or 2048 px.

Between Variation and Resolution are the effect's own settings, such as its colors, size and contrast.

The effects

Effect	What it does	Variations
Halftone Dots	Prints the picture as dots, in two colors or the picture's own (Original colors)	LED screen, Mosaic, Round and square
Halftone CMYK	Four-color printing dots: cyan, magenta, yellow and black	Drops, Vintage
Image Dithering	Few colors in a pattern of pixels, like an old computer screen	Retro, Noise, Natural
Fluted Glass	Looks through ribbed glass	Waves, Abstract, Folds
Lens Distortion	Bends the picture through a lens and splits its colors	Fisheye, Duotone, Smoke
Water	Ripples the picture under moving water with caustic light	Abstract, Streaming, Slow-mo
Paper Texture	Prints it on paper, with fibers, crumples, folds and drops	Abstract, Cardboard, Details
Chromatic aberration	Splits red, green and blue apart toward the edges	Edge fringe, Split
Glitch	Shifts blocks and tears lines, in bursts	Constant, Rare

Each also has a Default variation. The halftones, dithering, glass, lens, water and paper effects come from Paper Shaders, an open-source collection.

Stack and order effects

Effects run in order, top to bottom: each one works on what the one above it made. Change the order and you change the result.

Image Dithering then Lens Distortion, beside Lens Distortion then Image Dithering: the first bends dithered pixels, the second dithers a bent picture

Move an effect with ▲ and ▼. To compare with and without one, turn it off with its checkbox instead of removing it.

Animate an effect

Most settings and every color have a ◆. Click it to set a keyframe at the playhead, then change the value at another time. See Animation basics.

Effects that move on their own, such as Water and Glitch, follow the timeline. They play the same way every time and in your exports.

Things to know

Image effects work on shapes only. Text can't take them yet.
On a video, they play over every frame.

Important

An image effect changes one shape. To glitch, grain or grade the whole frame at once, use the effect library in the Scene's filters instead.