Joe's Filters: Joe's Soft Gradients

The Joe's Soft Gradients plugin is a part of Joe's Filters, a shareware package of utility and image processing tools for Final Cut Pro.

What it does

Joe's Soft Gradient is something of a combination of Joe's Soft Spot and Joe's Gradients. The filter blends a blurred image into the original through a user defined gradient mask.

This plugin can also be used to create partial diffusion effects similar to those in Joe's Diffuser. Experiment with different compositing options and blur amounts for a variety of effects.

Example Images

Original Image	blur: 20 direction: 0° width: 100 fade length: 100 offset: 0% Normal, 100%
blur: 20 direction: 90° width: 25 fade length: 50 offset: -50% Normal, 100%	blur: 30 direction: 90° width: 80 fade length: 0 offset: -50% invert: checked Normal, 100%
blur: 25 direction: 180° width: 50 fade length: 150 offset: 0% gaussian: checked Overlay, 100%	blur: 5 direction: 270° width: 50 fade length: 100 offset: 0% Screen, 100%

Joe's Soft Effects

There are four different soft effects included with Joe's Filters bringing a wide range of soft filtering to Final Cut Pro. Each plugin's offers different shapes for more creative freedom

Joe's Soft Ellipse

Joe's Soft Gradients

Joe's Soft Shapes

Joe's Soft Spot

The Controls

Several of the controls in this filter are identical to those in Joe's Gradients.

• Blur Radius (0 - 250)

  Amount to blur the affected portion of the image.

• Direction

  The angle of the masking gradient. This setting works like an arrow, the gradient fade in the direction specified and extend perpendicularly across the selected angle.

• Width (0 - 500)

  Sets the thickness of the gradient origin.

  Because this filter uses the FXScript Highlight function, gradients actually fade from a center line out to both directions. Width describes the thickness of the center line of the highlight gradient. This might affect results with large negative offset settings.

• Fade Length (0-300%)

  Sets the length of the gradient relative to the image size.

• Offset (-100 - 100%)

  This setting moves the gradient origin in towards or out from the center of the image.

• Gaussian

  Causes the gradient to use a gaussian falloff instead of a linear falloff for more naturalistic effects.

• Invert

  Reverses the affected area by inverting the mask.

• Mode, Opacity

  Composite controls to specify how to apply the blurred image back onto the original.

Building Joe's Soft Gradients

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