Joe's Filters: Joe's Color Glow

The Joe's Color Glow plugin a part of Joe's Filters, shareware utility and image processing effects for Final Cut Pro.

What it does

Joe's Color Glow simulates the popular effect of flaring highlights on film. The filter can apply either the color selected or a modified version of the image back onto itself using a variety of modes. Selections can be extensively modified for a wide range of effects from color flares to ranged-diffusion to color-specific solarizations.

When setting up selections using this filter, the following steps to help to define the selected area:

1. Set Edge Soften, Blur Selection and Blur (apply) to zero.
2. Pick a color with the eyedropper tool.
3. Adjust Tolerance and Edge Softness to set the base selection area.
4. Add Blurs and Thresholding to fine-tune the selected area.

If you are curious about FXScripts and Final Cut Pro, I also wrote a page about the FXScript behind Joe's Color Glow...

Example Images

The Controls

Select:

• Sample Color

  Selects a color to base the selection upon.

• Tolerance (0 - 511)

  Relaxes the standards on which colors will be included in the selection by their relationship to the Blur Color. The highest value will select the entire image, regardless of what color is selected

• Edge Softness (0 - 255)

  Includes gray values in the selection, this is similar to increasing Tolerance, but similar colors are represented by a shade of gray equal to their proximity to the Blur Color. Often, increasing Edge Softness means the Tolerance setting can be reduced to maintain a selected area.

• Invert

  Reverses the selection.

Modify:

• Blur Selection (0 - 150)

  Blurs the selection.

• Threshold (0 - 255)

  Applies a threshold operation to the selection. If the selection has been blurred, thresholding can grow or shrink the selection by darkening or lightening gray values.

• Steps (0 - 255)

  Values of posterization between black and white while thresholding. See Joe's Threshold and Posterize for more on thresholding and posterization.

Apply:

• Use (Color, Image)

  This determines whether the filter will fill the selection with the selected color, or with a copy of the original image.

• Fill Color

  The color which will fill the selected area when Use: Color is selected.

• Blur (0 - 255)

  This blurs both the mask and the fill, prior to compositing.

• Mode and Opacity

  Compositing controls to apply the masked element back to the original image.