Boris FX 6.1 offers a dramatic increase in the number of special effects filters, now over 60 in all. They offer comprehensive controls for Blurs, Color Corrections, Distortions, Keying, Lights, Nature, Noise and Particles.
Each filter can be precisely and dynamically masked with the Boris Pixel Chooser™ technology, which allows masks to be pulled from or applied to any channel (red, green, blue, luminance, etc.). Channel- and pixel-based selections may be made from any layer of the filtered layer, or from additional map layers for added flexibility.
Boris FX filters are tightly integrated into the Boris environment. Each can be applied as a standalone adjustment layer, as a downstream (post-transformation) filter, or as an upstream (pre-transformation) filter. Filters can also be combined to create dramatic effects.
By adding to all these the option of third-party filter plug-ins, Boris FX 6.1 offers an exceptional range of creative possibilities.
At left: FX 6.1's Rain filter, with unfiltered footage below. At right: Stars filter and Hue/Saturation/Lightness, with unfiltered footage below.
Scroll down for details on each filters, or select one of the following to learn more about a particular filter: Blurs | Color | Distortion | Keying | Lights | Natural Effects | Noise | Particles
Boris FX 6.1 delivers 4 powerful blurs, using the industry's fastest algorithms: Blur, Directional Blur, Gaussian Blur and Unsharp Mask. You can apply the Blur or Gaussian Blur filter to soften the focus of an image or create the appearance of lens diffusion, or add Directional Blur to simulate motion. The fourth Blur and Sharpen effect, Unsharp Mask, uses a classic technique to sharpen images and slightly increase contrast. All four filters have PixelChoosers and output channel menus, which allow you to precisely choose which channels and pixels to filter.
The Gaussian and Directional Blurs have many additional features which provide even greater control. The Apply Modes allow you to composite the effect in a in a variety of in creative ways. You can use Blur Threshold to blur high-contrast areas in your image without losing fine detail. The Spread and Thin parameters can soften image focus or produce double-vision effects. Striking glow effects can be created by using the Difference Apply Modes and adjusting the Blur Threshold, Spread, and Thin controls.
Blur filters, like all of Boris FX's filters, need not be applied only to a single track. Filters placed above a track filter every track below that filter. Blurs placed at the top level of a 3D container affect only the tracks below it in the container.
Boris FX 6.1 includes 13 different color filters. The color adjustment and correction effects — Bright/Contrast, Color Balance, Color Correction, Correct Selected, Hue-Saturation-Lightness, and Levels/Gamma — allow you to adjust image color, contrast, and/or luminosity in RGB or HSL color space.
The toning filters — Tint, Tritone and Multitone — can produce a variety of effects ranging from simple black and white images to complex tones using up to five independent, user-selectable colors. Artist's Poster and Posterize enables you to select the number of poster levels and provides several controls which scramble the image.
The remaining Color filters, Invert/Solarize and Shift Channels, offer additional creative options. Invert/Solarize inverts one of more channels in an image and can be used to create interesting solarization effects. Shift Channels uses values from selected input channels to compute new RGB and alpha channels for the output image.
Correct Selected applied, with unfiltered image at left.
The Distortion effects displace pixels in the source image in several different ways. Bulge creates a swelling or depression in the image. Ripple and Wave simulate wave motion in radial or linear patterns. Both of these filters animate automatically and allow you to adjust the wave speed, lighting, and waveform used in the effect. Displacement Map, Polar Displacement, and Vector Displacement all use a map track to displace pixels using linear, vector or polar functions. Each offers extensive map transformation tools.
Other Distortion filters include Edge Bevel and Fast Flipper. Edge Bevel creates the appearance of a beveled edge around the borders of an image. Fast Flipper simply flips your image. You can flip an image vertically or horizontally, or define a mirror line that will mirror your image in various directions. Resampling is done on a pixel-for-pixel basis, so the filter is fast and no quality is lost.
Boris FX 6.1 also adds Burnt Film, which simulates the look of holes burning through a layer of film to reveal another image. It provides control over the appearance of the burned edges and the burn rate, and allows you to use a custom alpha mask to set the shape of the burn holes. By changing the colors of the edges and the shape of the map layer, the filter also provides organic ways for layers to interact, without necessarily giving the impression of burning.
Below, Displacement Map of alpha-channel grid over a movie clip of a hand.
Boris RED includes 13 keying filters for creating and adjusting alpha mattes. These are exceptionally robust filters which produce more satisfying results with less effort than other compositing solutions, with unmatched flexibility.
The linear keys, Linear Color Key, Linear Luma Key, and Two Way Key, remove pixels whose color or luminance matches a selected key color. Linear keys are useful for creative compositing. You can use a linear key to remove a complex background from an opaque foreground image that you want to isolate, or to create a graduated matte for an artistic compositing effect.
Chroma Key is used to composite footage shot using a blue, green, or red screen as a backdrop over background video or a still image from a separate file.
The remaining keying filters include: Alpha Process, Composite Choker, Clean Up Alpha, Matte Choker and Premultiplied Alpha, which offer options for fine-tuning mattes; Make Alpha Key, a versatile effect that creates a new alpha channel from one of the existing channels in the image; and Luma Key, Luma Darker Key, and RGB Difference.
In addition to removing backgrounds with the Chroma Key filter, all Boris keying filters allow the matte channel to be viewed and edited separately from foreground and background elements.
