The Bilateral Blur Effect

The Bilateral Blur effect, introduced in After Effects CS4, is a unique blurring effect. It is similar to the Smart Blur effect that has been in After Effects for a while. Both blur effects attempt to keep edges crisp while blurring surface details, which is also similar to the way that the Surface Blur filter works in Photoshop. But the Bilateral Blur effect allows a slight amount of edge blur, which creates a real dreamy appearance that still appears natural. Like the Smart Blur effect, Bilateral Blur can also be used to smooth out compression artifacts and other surfaces, while keeping edges sharp. Also, contrary to its intimidating name, it’s a very simple effect to use and master.

Open the Bilateral Blur.aep project from the Chapter 4 folder of the exercise files. This project contains a photo I took of a ferry in Seattle.

Apply the Bilateral Blur effect to the ferry image layer. Thankfully, the defaults for this effect have changed to enable Colorize. But if it gets turned off, you’ll have a grayscale image, as seen in Figure 4.2.

The Bilateral Blur effect adds an interesting misty effect. The effects are particularly noticeable in the details (or, lack of them) in the clouds.

The default results create a misty, dreamlike haze over our image. This is great for ethereal dream sequences, or for simulating fog. If we reduce the Radius value, we reduce the amount of blur. Let’s take the Radius value to 5. This eliminates the overall hazy look, and just blurs surface textures. You’ll notice the grungy texture of the side of the ferry clean up quite a bit, while the edges around the ferry windows remain sharp. Unfortunately, you’ll also probably notice how this effect takes forever and a day to render! You’ll have to weigh the benefit of the effect’s results with the lengthy render time to determine if this effect will work for you.

We know that the Bilateral Blur effect mostly blurs surfaces, while leaving edges intact. But what qualifies as an edge? The Threshold parameter specifies what surfaces are considered edges. For a more blurry image, increase the Threshold value. To keep the images on small details, lower the Threshold value. Using a lowered Radius value of 10 (which localizes the blur) and an increased Threshold value of 10 (which preserves fine details), we get a cartoon-like stylized effect. I actually prefer these results to many of the results from the actual Cartoon effect.

As we’re seeing, the Bilateral Blur effect has more looks than Derek Zoolander. We’ve previously covered the Radius parameter, which can blur the colors of layers, while keeping edges intact. We get an edgy desaturated look when we set the Threshold value at 15, and take the Radius value to a ridiculously high value of 2000. Who would’ve thought that we could create more intensity with a blur effect?

Sometimes, with “unusual” blur effects such as Bilateral Blur and Smart Blur, it is helpful to compare the results to those of other blur effects. First, let’s take a look at this same image blurred with the Fast Blur effect. Take particular notice of what is happening to the edges. Blur effects like Fast Blur universally blur every pixel the same amount, so the edge details are immediately lost.

Finally, let’s look at this same example blurred by the Smart Blur effect, which is closely related to the Bilateral Blur effect. Notice how the results seem more stylized and artificial than what we’ve seen with the Bilateral Blur effect.

The Box Blur Effect

The Box Blur effect is perhaps the most advanced of the standard blur effects (e.g., Fast Blur and Gaussian Blur). This effect gets its name because all pixels within the Blur Radius get equal weighting, as opposed to something like Gaussian Blur, where each neighboring pixel gets a unique weighting. This basically just means that the blur calculates faster. And as we’ll see, this effect can actually achieve smoother results than Fast Blur or Gaussian Blur as well.

Open the Box Blur.aep project from the Chapter 4 folder of the exercise files. This project contains a comp with a simple shape layer that will help us to see what’s really happening with the Box Blur effect. Then we’ll look at another example of the Box Blur effect using a comp in this project that contains a still image. First, go to the shape layer comp and apply the Box Blur effect to the shape layer.

The default settings of the Box Blur effect don’t do very much. Increase the amount of blur by increasing the Blur Radius parameter. If you take this value to small amounts (<5), the blur will seem somewhat similar to a generic blur. Take the Blur Radius value to 50 to see the boxiness of this blur effect.

This type of boxy blur can create interesting results with motion graphics. But what if you wanted a smoother blur? One of the paradoxes of the Box Blur effect is that it can create blurs that are both boxier and smoother than standard blur effects like Fast Blur and Gaussian Blur. This is all thanks to the Iterations parameter, which determines how many copies of this blur is applied to the layer. So, if we use an Iterations value of 3, it would be like duplicating the effect three times. This creates a very smooth blur.

Next, let’s see what the Box Blur effect looks like on an image. Hop on over to the not intimidated comp, which contains a photo of my daughter going toe to toe with a llama. She really has no fear of animals, even ones 10 times her size.

Apply the Box Blur effect to this layer. The boxy results of the effect are much more difficult to see when applied to actual footage. But the Box Blur effect does create a signature halo around objects. This could be great for creating a dazed and confused POV shot.

Just by way of comparison, I’m going to apply the Fast Blur effect to this layer (making sure to turn off the visibility of the Box Blur effect). I’m also going to take the Blurriness value to 25.

Notice that the halo created by the Box Blur effect is much more pronounced. The Fast Blur effect smoothes out the blur results more. There isn’t a right or wrong way to blur, just different methods that you might prefer in different circumstances.

The Camera Lens Blur Effect

The Camera Lens Blur effect is an upgrade from the venerable Lens Blur effect, and is the most powerful and complex of all effects in this chapter. It can be viewed as a cross between the 3D Channel effect, Depth of Field, and Compound Blur. I use this effect because its style of blur resembles true camera blur much more than any other blur effect, especially the way it causes highlights to bloom.

Figure 4.17 shows a clip that I shot that just didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to. The colors all kind of blend together, and the subject doesn’t really pop. I also spent a lot of time trying to make the background beautiful with all of the glass, mirrors, lights, and reflections in the background. But it just fell flat. You can find this clip and the accompanying project in the Camera Lens Blur.aep project in the Chapter 4 folder of the exercise files.

So, I did some initial color correction, made some selective adjustments using masks, and I like this much better now. However, the background still doesn’t have the magical quality that I was looking for.

What’s missing here is more separation between subject and background. In times past, I might have grabbed for the Fast Blur effect (or something similar). But if we apply Fast Blur (to the CAMERA BLUR ADJ LAYER layer—which already has a rough background mask created for you), taking the Blurriness value to about 15 pixels, we do get more separation between the girl and the bottles, but it still falls flat and doesn’t have the same realism that would be there if we shot this with a shallow depth of field.

No, this won’t work. What this is missing is bokeh, which is a common term for the blooms created in camera by blurry highlights. Bokeh is just magical—in motion graphics and visual

effects. It’s like fog and backlighting in cinematography, or magic wands in Harry Potter land, or pizza to elementary school parties. It just makes everything better.

So, I’m going to delete the Fast Blur effect and apply the Camera Lens Blur effect. The default settings here can be pretty mild, so let’s turn up the Blur Radius value to 15. Ooh. That’s interesting. We’re now seeing some of that beautiful bokeh in the bottles in the background. To make that pop even more, I’m going to increase the Gain value (in the Highlight section) to 60. To increase the amount of stuff that gets that “pop” applied to it, I’m going to decrease the Threshold value to 120 (assuming that, like me, your current project is in 8 bpc mode). These settings are very strong so that you can see them noticeably in Figure 4.20. You may want to dial them back a little to taste. Note that you can also increase the Highlight>Saturation value if you’d like more color in your bokeh.

But all in all, this is amazing. Fast Blur (and other blurs) have a tendency to wash out highlights which, again, is not how things work in a camera. And also, as you increase the blur, the edges of the bokeh (the highlight blooms) will still remain sharp, as they do when recorded with real world optics.

By default, the shape of the bokeh is a hexagon. But you can change this to triangles, diamonds (squares), or other shapes by changing the Shape drop down value in the Iris Properties section. I don’t have extremely expensive lenses, and the shape of the bokeh is determined by the components of the lens. So most of my lenses just make circles, as opposed to other shapes. In order to make this lens blur to composite better with footage I’ve shot, I change the Shape value to Decagon, which creates round blooms in the highlights, just what I’m used to from my camera

and lenses. Now my image looks significantly more beautiful than it did initially, the subject just pops of the screen, and the background is all sparkly and beautiful.

The Camera Lens Blur effect also allows you to create blurred areas on a layer based on the grayscale values of another layer (like Compound Blur). But the controls are based on camera terminology (like depth of field). If you are interested in using depth of field to tell your stories (and who isn’t?), then you may find the Camera Lens Blur effect the most efficient and flexible way to do that.

I’m going to import the KS103.mov clip from the Artbeats folder in the Media folder in the exercise files.

Next, I’m going to duplicate this layer and double click it to open it in the Layer panel. I’m then going to paint a depth map using grayscale values. I’m going to paint the objects furthest away with black, the kids in the middle with 50% gray, and the part of the image closest to the camera in white. It doesn’t have to be pretty or accurate. You’ll then need to precompose this layer so that it can be used as a map by the Camera Lens Blur effect. Once you’ve precomposed this layer, turn off its visibility. As is usually the case with maps, they do not need to be visible to be used as maps, and it’s usually preferable that they are not seen.

Now apply the Camera Lens Blur effect to the unpainted layer of the kids in the Artbeats clip. Change the Depth Map Layer drop

down to the nested comp that you painted the depth map on. The default results don’t give us what we want, but you can still see how we’ve created natural looking depth of field from scratch.

The Camera Lens Blur effect kept the areas sharp where we painted black, and blurred the bright areas. If you’re looking for the opposite results, you can check the Invert Depth Map value in the Effect Controls panel. This will change the way that the map is interpreted, making the bright areas crisp and the dark areas blurry.

These results look spectacular, but this isn’t what we’re looking for here. This footage is not about grass or trees—it’s about kids. Won’t someone please think about the children? The way that we shift the focus through this image is by adjusting the Blur Focal Distance parameter. And truthfully, it is the Blur Focal Distance property that really makes this effect so powerful. I deselected the Invert Depth Map option, and took the Blur Focal Distance value to about 0.53. This leaves the children in focus, and blurs the foreground and background.

These results are nothing short of spectacular, especially considering how easy it was to set this project up. But the real power here is in the ability of the Camera Lens Blur effect to animate the Blur Focal Distance property. This can create shifts in the focal plane that are animated, the same way a camera’s lens might shift. This effect cannot be created with the Compound Blur effect. The Camera Lens Blur (which, again, is also now found for the most part in the controls of AE cameras) is simply one of the greatest tools in After Effects for creating photorealistic optical blur.

The Channel Blur Effect

The Channel Blur effect is really useful, and for multiple purposes. First, we’ll examine how to use it creatively, then we’ll use it for a great utilitarian purpose.

Open the Channel Blur.aep project from the Chapter 4 folder. We’re going to start out in the Static Logo for AE comp. This comp contains a logo I created in Adobe Illustrator. Apply the Channel Blur effect to the Bkgrd layer. The isolated Bkgrd layer is seen in Figure 4.27.

The Channel Blur effect is easy to understand, although its practical uses may not be as readily apparent. This effect can individually blur each channel—red, green, blue, and also the alpha channel. Increase the Red Blurriness value, for example, to blur only the red channel. This creates some interesting color variations. In Figure 4.28, I took the Red Blurriness value to 100. This dissipates the red in the image, and seems to add green to the result as more cyan is added on top of the yellow background. Note that in this figure, all of the logo elements have their visibility turned back on, and the blur is only applied to the background layer seen in Figure 4.27.

Likewise, having a Green Blurriness value of 100 blurs the green, which in effect, adds magenta.

One of the most unique aspects of this effect is that you can also use it to blur the edges of a layer’s alpha channel using the Alpha Blurriness property. This creates a soft transparency around the outer edges. In this example, the added transparency creates a dark falloff effect that adds to the feel of the piece.

I’m going to create a new solid behind the Bkgrd layer and apply the Checkerboard effect (discussed in Chapter 9). Now it might be easier to see the effects of the Alpha Blurriness parameter.

Now that we’ve seen the Channel Blur in action for creative purposes, let’s turn our attention to using the Channel Blur effect for a more practical purpose. Switch over to the paavo balancing comp. This comp contains some green screen footage that has been severely compressed.

In the case of most video, noise is stored in the blue channel. To see the various color channels separately, click the lengthily named Show Channel and Color Management Settings drop down at the bottom of the Composition panel. Its icon looks like a little Venn diagram, with three interlocking circles.

From the Show Channel and Color Management Settings drop down, I’m going to change the value from RGB (which is the default composite view of all color channels with alpha) to Green. This will show us a visual readout of the green light used to make this image. I’m going to also zoom in to about 800% so that we can get a better look at the noise and compression artifacts in this channel.

The green channel looks pretty clean. Now let’s change the view to the blue channel and see the difference.

Wow. What a difference in the two channels! The green channel is mostly clean, and the blue channel is extremely noisy. We can use the Channel Blur effect to smooth out the blue channel only, which will result in a cleaner end composite. And as long as we’re at least fairly conservative in our channel blurring, the results in the composite should still look sharp.

Apply the Channel Blur effect to the paavo balancing layer. Take the Blue Blurriness to 2. This will clean up the ugliness in this channel significantly.

At this point, you might be worried about the crispness of our final composite. After all, this was a pretty obvious blur. However, if you’re only blurring 1 or 2 channels conservatively, it’s enough to remove noise while maintaining quality. Change the value in the Show Channels and Color Management Settings drop down back to RGB to see the composite result of all channels.

The Compound Blur Effect

The Compound Blur effect blurs a layer based on the luminance of another layer. In Chapter 23, we’ll look a little closer at using layers as maps to control effect properties. If you’re unfamiliar with this concept, the Compound Blur effect is the best place to start.

Open the Compound Blur.aep project from the Chapter 4 folder of the exercise files. The comp we’ll be working with here is the Lioness with map comp.

Aside from this lioness photo, this comp also contains two grayscale layers that we’ll use as controllers to determine where the lioness layer will be blurred. First we’ll look at the layer called blur map. This is a grayscale map that I painted in Photoshop, based on the lioness image. Notice how I painted with white

where the face of the lioness is, black in the background, and with different shades of gray around the body of the lioness. I realize that it looks really rough, but when using maps to control layer properties, you typically want them soft and free of small details.

Apply the Compound Blur effect to the Lioness layer. The default results resemble a bad Photoshop filter. This is because the Compound Blur effect needs to be controlled by the gray-scale values of a layer in order to work. By default, the effect uses the layer it was applied to as a map to determine how to blur it.

Change the Blur layer selection to the blur map layer. This will use the luminance values of the blur map layer to control the areas of the Lioness layer that will have blur applied to them. Note that layers used as controllers (i.e., in the Blur layer drop down) do not need to be visible to be used as the Blur layer. In this case, selecting the blur map layer gives us the opposite of the results we were looking for. The face of the Lioness is blurred, and the background remains sharp.

The good news is that most effects that use grayscale maps as controllers have a fix for problems like this. Click the Invert Blur checkbox to change the rules. Now, the dark areas on the map will correspond to blurry areas on the Lioness layer. Bright areas will correspond to areas less affected by the blur.

The results are getting close now that our map is setup properly. However, the default Maximum Blur value of 20 is just too much blur in this case. So, let’s complete this look by reducing the Maximum Blur (blur amount) value to 7.

There is another layer in this comp that I want to try out as a Blur layer here. This is a fiery grayscale pattern created with the Fractal Noise effect (discussed in Chapter 11).

When we apply this fiery noise layer as the Blur layer, the luminance of the fire pattern is used to control where (and how much) blur is applied to the layer. This creates a more interesting pattern when the Maximum Blur value is increased to 100. Note that this fractal fire pattern animates. Preview this comp to see the blur pattern move around as the fractal fire pattern changes.

You could use such maps to create shockwave-type blur effects, or the wavy distortion that appears over flames.

The Directional Blur Effect

Like the horizontal and vertical blurs we looked at earlier in this chapter, the Directional Blur effect allows you to blur pixels at an angle. The difference is that the Directional Blur effect allows you to specify exactly which angle that is. This effect is similar to the Motion Blur effect in Photoshop. This effect is usually used to simulate or suggest motion.

Open the Directional Blur.aep project from the Chapter 4 folder of the exercise files. This project contains a comp with a rocket image I created in 3DS Max.

Apply the Directional Blur effect to the ROCKET tiny.tga layer. There are only two properties in this effect. The Blur Length parameter determines the size (distance) of the blur, and the Direction parameter determines the angle of the blur. I’m going to start out taking the Blur Length value to 40. The default Direction value causes a vertical blur.

We can get a similar result from many blur effects. The real power with the Directional Blur effect is that we can specify the exact angle of blur. Take the Direction value to 40 degrees, which is something other blur effects can’t do.

This effect would look much better if it were underneath a copy of this layer that did not have the effect applied to it (which will only work because the object has an alpha channel that isolates the subject). Most of the time when I use the Directional Blur effect, I use it on copies of a layer that are beneath it in the layer stack in the Timeline panel. So, I’ll duplicate this layer by selecting it in the Timeline panel and pressing Ctrl+D(Win)/Cmd+D(Mac). Then, I will remove (delete) the effect from the copy on top. Then, I might change the angle to about 85, so it looks like it’s horizontal, but slightly tilted upwards on the right-hand side. Then, I’ll move the blurred layer to the left a little bit. Finally, I’ll reduce the Opacity value on the blurred rocket layer to about 60%. All of these steps create the illusion that the rocket is moving.

The effect here is quite subtle. For a more intense, “warping through time” effect, increase the Opacity value of the blurred rocket layer back to 100%, and drag it on top of the rocket without the blur to reorder the layers in the Timeline panel.

Even if you’re not recreating objects in motion, you can still use the Directional Blur effect to add pizzazz to text, logos, and other graphic elements. Figure 4.51 contains a logo that is similar to something that we’ll be creating in Chapter 17.

The Fast Blur Effect

The Fast Blur effect is probably the blur effect that I turn to most often. It renders incredibly fast (hence the name), and it is a simple, predictable blur. It’s great for everything from softening particles to adding a bit of soft defocus to background elements (although for realistic camera blur, the Camera Lens Blur effect is your best bet, if you have the extra render time for it). As an added bonus, it also functions at 32 bits per channel.

I think (and hope) it’s fairly apparent at this point in the chapter what blur does. So, I want to show you how to set up HDR (High Dynamic Range) text that can be blurred with the Fast Blur effect.

Let’s start by going to File>New>New Project. Then click the Create a new composition button at the bottom of the Project panel to create a new composition. Use the NTSC DV preset and click OK. Next, press the finger-tangling keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+Shift+T(Win)/Cmd+Opt+Shift+T(Mac) to create a new text layer and place the cursor in the center of the composition. Now type your name. With the text selected (highlighted), increase the size of your text in the Character panel. Also in the Character panel, click the upper left swatch and choose a white color for your text. White is created by using the value 255 for the red, green, and blue channels. You can use the font of your choice. When you’ve completed your adjustments, accept your changes by selecting the Selection tool in the toolbar, or by pressing Enter on the numeric keypad.

Next, apply the Fast Blur effect. As you can see, it’s another simple effect. We can control the amount of blur with the Blurriness parameter. We can also change the blur dimensions as we talked about earlier in this chapter. Taking the Blurriness value to about 20, we see the expected results.

Now we want to turn this into HDR text. To do that, we must be working in a project that operates at 32 bits per channel. To change my project over, I’m going to go to the bottom of the Project panel. In the area that displays 8 bpc, Alt(Win)/Opt(Mac) click this twice, until it displays 32 bpc.

This puts our project into 32 bits per channel mode, which allows for HDR color. HDR color allows us to create whites that are whiter than white and blacks that are blacker than black. With our project in 32 bpc mode, go back to the Character panel. Click the Fill Color swatch in the Character panel to open the Text Color dialog. In 32 bpc mode, white is created by a value of 1 for the red, green, and blue channels.

Note that you’re able to change the way colors are displayed throughout After Effects by going to the flyout menu of the Info panel and choosing a different color display format. Many colorists and compositors choose to change this option in the Info panel flyout to Decimal, even when working in 8 bpc mode. So then, you’ll only have this “0-1” color model working for you if Auto Color Display or Decimal is chosen as the color display format from the Info panel flyout menu.

The magic of this HDR stuff is that we can now take these values above white; whiter than white. You will see the value of this momentarily. For now, take the Red value to 3, leave the Green value at 1, and take the Blue value to 2. This is like adding more intense white light from the red and blue channels. Because the Fast Blur effect processes in 32 bits per channel, it responds to this extra light, and blurs accordingly. The results behave more like light does in the real world.

The Gaussian Blur Effect

Those of you familiar with Photoshop probably have a special reverence in your heart for the Gaussian Blur filter. For many years, it was the only way to control how much blur you added to a layer. Because of this, After Effects users that started out as Photoshop users often come first to the Gaussian Blur effect. However, in After Effects, the Gaussian Blur effect is exactly the same thing as the Fast Blur effect, except for one major difference. The Gaussian Blur effect does not have the Repeat Edge Pixels option that we just looked at. I hate to break your heart (and loyalties) Photoshop users, but the Fast Blur effect makes the Gaussian Blur effect obsolete—in After Effects, anyway. It also seems like the Fast Blur effect renders a bit faster (with the same level of quality) on top of that.

The Radial Blur Effect

The Radial Blur effect is one of my favorites. It can take boring textures and make them spring to life. This effect also functions similarly to the filter of the same name in Photoshop.

The Radial Blur effect has two very distinct blur modes: Spin and Zoom. Let’s look first at the default Spin blur. Open up the Radial Blur.aep project from the Chapter 4 folder. This project contains a pattern I created using Fractal Noise (from Chapter 11), the Levels effect (from Chapter 6), and Glow (from Chapter 17).

Apply the Radial Blur effect. The default settings apply a spin blur. This creates a circular (i.e., radial) blur around the edges. It reminds me of what a freeze frame from video of this texture in a dryer might look like.

The first change I’d like to make here is to change the Antialiasing setting at the bottom of the effect in the Effect Controls panel. Change it from its default Low to High. This will help smooth out a little of the nasty little bits of noise that we often get with this effect.

Other than the blur type and the Antialiasing settings, there are really only two parameters here: Amount (as in blur amount) and Center. We haven’t seen a Center value in any other blur effect. This allows you to move the blur around, because both

spinning and zooming need a center point. If you wanted to create a quick sun effect, this would be idea.

Now let’s look at zoom blur. Hit the Reset button at the top of the Radial Blur effect in the Effect Controls panel to start over again. Now change the Antialiasing back to High again, and change the Type drop down from Spin to Zoom. This creates the jump to warp speed look.

I probably use Zoom far more often than Spin because I love how Zoom makes things so much more intense. Zoom blur creates the illusion that things are flying towards you, which is great in a variety of motion graphics settings. However, the default Amount value is far too small for my taste when using zoom blur. I’m going to increase this value to about 80.

I absolutely love what this zoom blur is trying to do. Hey, I’m a nerd to the core. This effect brings out my inner Hans Solo and my inner Captain Kirk at the same time. But this effect is severely limited by all of the ugly noise introduced when you crank up that Amount value. Here’s a solution that might work in some cases. Try keeping a lower Amount value (low enough to avoid the ugly, aliased noise), and then selecting the effect in the Effect Controls panel, and then pressing Ctrl+D(Win)/Cmd+D(Mac) to duplicate the effect several times. The results are similar in intensity, but usually look much better.

We’ll be coming back to the Radial Blur effect occasionally throughout this book. For example, there’s another great trick using the Radial Blur effect in Chapter 7, when we look at the Polar Coordinates effect. The Radial Blur effect really is a

great way to breathe life into a texture. If you have the Cycore set of plugins that have shipped with the recent versions of After Effects, you can also try the CC Radial Fast Blur effect, which renders faster, and looks cleaner in many cases.

The Reduce Interlace Flicker Effect

Interlace flicker is often caused by horizontal stripes appearing in interlaced footage. The result is an undesirable moire pattern that appears to flicker on video. The Reduce Interlace Flicker effect attempts to right such wrongs by adding a slight blur to striped patterns.

To test this effect, open up the Flicker.aep project from the Chapter 4 folder. This project contains the type of high-contrast horizontal stripes pattern that you really want to avoid when creating interlaced video.

Apply the Reduce Interlace Flicker effect to the interlace nightmare layer. The only property you can adjust here is Softness. Increasing the Softness value will add a slight blur that will reduce the contrast between the lines, which will in turn reduce flickering when interlaced and broadcast.

The Sharpen Effect

The Sharpen effect is the first non-blur effect we’ve looked at in this chapter. While the blur effects in this chapter remove details, sharpen effects enhance them. Sharpen effects are essentially the opposite of blur effects. The Sharpen effect is the most simple way to sharpen a layer, but Unsharp Mask is definitely a more powerful choice for sharpening.

Let’s open up the Sharpen.aep project from the Chapter 4 folder of the exercise files. This comp contains a simple video clip.

This footage has a good amount of clarity, but we can enhance it further with the Sharpen effect. Apply Sharpen to the Ventura Fountain layer. Sharpening effects usually work their mojo by detecting edges, and then lightening the light side and darkening the dark side. But sharpening is like an addiction: you often get in over your head before you even realize that you have a problem.

In Figure 4.69, I took the Sharpen Amount value to 50. This is an excessively high value that probably should not be used in most cases. I used such a high value here so that you could see the result of the effect, but also so that you could see the artifacts that excess sharpening can create. These artifacts (“halos” as they’re called) are to be avoided at all costs. While the Sharpen effect does enhance details, it doesn’t give you the control that the Unsharp Mask effect does to avoid such problems. Also remember that as you enhance good details with sharpening (such as the cool brick texture in the background here), you also enhance bad details, such as noise and compression artifacts.

The Smart Blur Effect

The Smart Blur effect is a lot like the Bilateral Blur effect introduced in After Effects CS4. I actually prefer the look of Bilateral Blur, but the Smart Blur effect is similar and renders much faster. Depending on your hardware and deadlines, you may prefer one to the other.

Both effects attempt to keep edges intact while blurring surfaces. I think it also works well as an effect to stylize a layer like a cartoon or a painting.

Let’s open up the Smart Blur.aep project from the Chapter 4 folder. This project has a composition (called Smart Blur) that contains a nested composition with a few layers (a vector logo on top of an Artbeats video clip). It’s important to note that this is all on one layer.

Apply the Smart Blur effect to Pre-comp 1 layer here. The default results blur some of the windows and surfaces of the buildings, but the hard edges of the logo have not been affected by this intelligent blur in the slightest.

As with Bilateral Blur, we have a Radius value to determine the amount of the blur. We also have the Threshold value that specifies what constitutes an edge. If I take the Threshold value up to 100 for example, I get a result that only vaguely resembles the original buildings. And still, the edges of the logo are razor sharp.

One of the things that I don’t quite get about this effect is the Mode drop down. You can change it to Edge Only to create a black image with white edges. I suppose that this could be useful in analyzing how the Smart Blur is calculating the edges, based on the Threshold value. The Overlay Edge Mode leaves the colors intact, but adds a white overlay of the edges.

As I mentioned, this effect can also be great to create an artistic, stylized look. Importing the fountain video that we looked at with the Sharpen effect, I applied the Smart Blur filter with the default settings. The results seem to create a painting out of this video.

The Unsharp Mask Effect

Out of the two sharpening effects in After Effects (Sharpen and Unsharp Mask), Unsharp Mask is definitely the more powerful of the two. Unsharp Mask is more powerful because it has more controls. It has the same parameters that the Unsharp Mask filter in Photoshop does. If you don’t have a Photoshop background, you might be surprised to know that After Effects’ best sharpening effect is actually called “unsharp.” Long story.

To give the Unsharp Mask effect a test drive, open up the Sharpen.aep project again. Apply the Unsharp Mask effect to this layer. As opposed to the Sharpen effect, the default results make a subtle but noticeable difference.

I’m going to increase the Amount value to 100 so that the results are more obvious on the printed page. I’m also going to duplicate this layer and apply a Linear Wipe transition so that you can see the sharpened version and unsharpened version side by side.

The effect is a subtle one, mostly noticeable in the brick pattern and shrubbery. But that’s kinda the point with the Unsharp Mask effect. We want to enhance details, but we don’t want that enhancement obvious.

You can increase the intensity of the sharpening the Radius effect, with the disclaimer that it’s usually a bad idea to take this value above 2. If the results are too intense, you can lessen the sharpening by increasing the Threshold value.

Again, I prefer this effect to the Sharpen effect because of the extra parameters (Radius and Threshold). But not only that, the Amount value (that controls the amount of blur in the Unsharpen Mask effect) produces more refined results than the Sharpen Amount property in the Sharpen effect does. It’s also far easier to get those ugly sharpening artifacts with the Sharpen effect, while the Unsharp Mask effect generally produces more subtle enhancements.