Joe's Filters: Joe's Soft Spot

The Joe's Soft Spot Plugin is a part of Joe's Filters, shareware utility and image processing effects for Final Cut Pro.

What it does

Joe's Soft Spot blurs the image insider of or around a user-specified spot. The spot's size and softness can be adjusted and the spot itself can either contain the blur or blur everything outside it. The resulting effect is similar to a photographic soft spot filter such as the Tiffen Center Spot filter.

Example Images

Original Image
Blur: 20 radius: 150 edge: 150 Normal, 100%	Blur: 30 radius: 175 edge: 0 Normal, 100%
Blur: 40 radius: 15 edge: 80 Normal, 100%	Blur: 5 radius: 220 edge: 200 Multiply, 100%

The Aspect slider can be used to tweak the soft shape vertically or horizontally. For other angles, see Joe's Soft Ellipse.

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

• Blur (0 - 250)

  Amount to blur the affected portion of the image.

• Origin

  The centerpoint of the effect circle.

• Radius (0 - 500)

  The radius of the effect circle.

• Edge Soften (0 - 200)

  The softness of the blur-circle's edge. A value of zero results in a hard-edged circle.

• Gaussian

  This setting determines the falloff of the gradient's edge. I think Gaussian looks more natural, so I made it on by default.

• Invert

  Reverses the affected area between a soft spot and a soft circular frame.

• Aspect (0.1 - 10)

  Defines the effect aspect ratio. Values less than one skew vertically, values greater than one skew horizontally. This amount is multiplied by the sequence aspect ratio, so a value of 1 is round no matter what aspect ratio is being used in the sequence.

• Mode, Opacity

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

Building Joe's Soft Spot

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