Effects

An effect is one stage in a layer’s effect stack. The stack composites top to bottom, applying in that order.

Apply an effect

Select a layer.
Choose Effect, then a category, then the effect.

You can also choose effects via the Effects console, or dragged onto a layer from the Effects & presets panel. With nothing selected, the whole menu is disabled.

A clip on a Sequence layer carries an effect stack of its own. See Cutting.

Edit the parameters

Select the layer and open the Effect Controls panel. Every parameter there can be animated: turn on its stopwatch to begin. See Keyframes.

Order matters

Effects run in stack order. An exposure ahead of a glow does not look like a glow ahead of an exposure. Drag an effect up or down the stack to reorder it.

Past the layer’s edges

A layer’s picture is the size of the layer, and a shape or text layer’s is the size of its art. Some effects reach past it, and the layer grows to hold them:

Drop shadow, always.
Gaussian blur, Channel blur, Directional blur and Glow, with Repeat edge pixels off. Added to a shape or text layer, they start with it off.
Tile, with an output larger than the layer.

An effect after one of these works on the grown layer. Its points and mask paths stay where they were on the layer. A Matte is black past the layer’s edges. On an adjustment layer nothing reaches past the frame.

Several layers

With several layers selected, an effect from the Effect menu, the Effects console or the Effects & presets panel goes on the primary layer only.

Effects on adjustment layers apply to the composite of everything below them. See Layers.

Every effect has a Matte

Every effect’s controls have a layer picker labelled Matte, with a Channel dropdown and an Invert checkbox beside it. It sits with the Mix row under Compositing at the foot of the effect. Channel picks what is read from the matte layer: its brightness by default, or its alpha or one of the colour channels. Select a layer and that layer’s brightness decides how much of the effect each pixel gets. White applies the effect in full and black gets none. Invert reads the same picture the other way round.

Compositing is shut until you twirl it open. Shut, it reads whatever is off its default: the mix, the blend and the matte layer.

Compositing shut on one effect, reading its mix, and open on the next.

A matte is different from a mask on the effect. A mask can hide what an effect does, whereas a matte drives the effect itself. For a handful of effects it applies more than just strength:

Gaussian blur narrows its radius.
Turbulent displace scales its turbulence.
Glow gates pixels used to find areas of glow.
Depth of field reads it as a depth pass.
Lens flare reads it as where to find its light sources.
Set matte reads it as the alpha itself, which is the whole effect.

Lumit renders the matte layer on its own and reads it where it sits in the composition. Beside the picker, the Layer source dropdown has the option to read that layer raw, with its masks, or with its effects applied. If it is the same layer the effect is on, it reads that layer’s own picture at that point in the stack.

The built-in roster

Each effect has its own page under Effects, with a table of every parameter and its range, default and units.

Category	What the family is for
Blur & sharpen	Softening and detail lift.
Colour	Grading: exposure, balance, contrast, and colour altering.
Distortion	Warp pixels.
Generate	Effects that make a picture instead of changing one.
Stylise	Glow, flare, relief and blocks.
Temporal	Effects that read frames at other times, or change which frame is drawn.
Transition	Wipes, driven by a completion parameter you keyframe.
Utility	Keying, mattes, transform, and other useful effects.
Audio	Effects that change a layer’s sound. They draw nothing.
Compositing	Merge, Switch and Time offset. They exist only inside a node graph composition, and the Effect menu never offers them.
Controls	Values for expressions to read.
Drivers	Values other effects follow, wired on a graph. The Effect menu files them under Controls.

The three kinds of motion blur

These are easy to confuse:

What	Where	Does
Motion blur switch	A layer switch	Smears one layer based on its transforms.
Motion blur effect	An effect	Calculates estimated motion vectors for what it’s applied on, and generates motion blur based on that.
Accumulation motion blur effect	An effect	Re-renders the scene below at sub-frame times and averages out to calculate almost true to life motion blur. Slow, as every sample is a full render.

Plugins

OpenFX plugins appear beside the built-in effects. See Plugins.