Authority FX releases free After Effects plugins

Authority FX’s Ryan Wilson is generously sharing a number of plugins that were previously available commercially, including Chromakey, Glow, Lens Glow, Defocus, Z Defocus, Desaturate, Clamp and Soft Clip. He has also released the code of the licensing system for the plugins as open source. The plugins are now being ported to The Foundry’s Nuke and will be released as open source later in 2016.

List of plugins:

• Chroma Key – intelligently analyzes any chroma screen to give great results without clicking a single button. With built-in spill control, and matte options including highly accurate anti-aliasing, crisp clean mattes with solid cores are easily achieved
• Glow – generates a beautiful glow with a realistic falloff. Default settings work on almost all shots and applications, from lightsabers to subtle light wrap
• Lens Glow – simulates chromatic aberration and other asymmetric lens phenomena by approximating the way light bounces inside a lens
• Defocus – extremely fast defocusing filter that generates realistic bokeh. Fully adjustable blade count, iris shape, and blade rotation
• Z Defocus – depth map powered z-defocusing for realistic depth of field approximations. With all the same iris controls as our standard Defocus plugin, the focal point and depth of field can be easily controlled. The tilt shift sliders can be used to rotate the focal plane
• Desaturate – desaturate an image with CIELAB L*, HSI Intensity, HSL Lightness, HSV Value, Luma, and Custom Color. Each mode has Desaturate, Gain, Lift, and Gamma sliders to perfectly adjust the perceived brightness of the image
• Clamp – this plugin is essential when working with floating point image. For example, a sharpening operation can result in negative values. These values need to be clamped prior to alpha divides or subsequent filtering
• Soft Clip – floating point images with white values above one, require some form of tone mapping. The non-linear gain adjustment of the soft clip can be used to reduce over-brights

More on Authority FX’s website.