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SPECTRALICIOUS

A six-color gradient effect with controls for blending options, exposure, and saturation. Includes Master Spread settings for quick feathering or sharpening spectrum points' edges.

Presets

Get started instantly in Spectralicious with over two dozen presets that simulate sky color tones, warm/cool moods, and more. Find these presets via the blue Open Dashboard... button or the Choose a Preset... button below it.

As with all other Universe tools, you can modify or create a Spectralicious look and then save it under its own name by pressing the Save Preset... button.

Spectralicious Core Concepts

Before we jump into this tool's controls, it may be helpful to have a high-level understanding of what Spectralicious is and how it works. Essentially, Spectralicious creates a composition-wide color expanse comprised of six color regions. Each region links to its own control point. You can mark a certain region within that expanse for cropping, and only the color points within that region will render across the image's full frame.

Spectralicious can blend onto the underlying footage layer. If you have a mask on this layer, the results may look something like this:

Spectralicious excels at making background color textures for titling as well as highly customizable color progressions that work like camera filters when blended with underlying footage.

Modify the Effect

• The Show Overlays checkbox places point markers in the composition window for each numbered Point from 01 to 06. This makes it easy to reposition color regions and choose the colors you’d like for the corresponding points. Be sure to disable this checkbox when you’re ready to render out the final image. Otherwise, the points will appear in your exported footage.
  
• Numbered 01 through 06, the Point controls are spread by default across the composition. Use the cross-hair control or x/y numerical parameters to reposition these points to new locations in the composition to create different spectra with the tool.
  
• Each Point has corresponding Color and Opacity controls, helping you customize the appearance of each color region.
• When adjusted down, Master Spread expands the brightest part of each individual color in the frame but restricts how colors blend. When increased, the brightest parts of the colors appear to contract but the overall colors diffuse and blend for a softer look. Shown below are values of 1% (left) and 500 percent (right).
  
• Noise adds slight noise patterns to your gradient for a more organic look that covers the banding you may encounter in some gradient instances. The following example (captured at 800% zoom) compares values of 10 (left) and 100 (right).
  
• The Preview Crop checkbox and Crop 01/02 controls allow you to reposition the spectrum to a “zoomed in” selection. The boundaries of this selection are defined by the rectangle defined by the Crop 01 and 02 points. Let's take a closer look at this, starting with the Mirror preset's default state and Show Overlays enabled.
  
  Now, let's check the Preview Crop box.
  
  The word "crop" may be a bit confusing. You could also think of it as a "region of concentration." As you can see in the second image above, all color points lie outside the crop region, yet they continue to exert an influence within the region (as seen in the first image). What happens when we expand the crop region and tweak the color point placements? Here's with Preview Crop enabled:
  
  We put the cross-hairs on Point 02 to draw attention to it. Notice how it's deep in the crop region, but positioned just right of center, so it should manifest as a fairly prominent, level band across the image. Now, here's the final impact of this positioning and cropping has on our final colorscape (with Show Overlays and Preview Crop both unchecked).
  
  It's as if everything inside the crop region stretched to fill our comp. But pay attention to how each color presents within our image, both in terms of position and how they overlap and "squeeze" one another. Now, go back to our first image in this sequence and consider why the original preset has such a narrow crop region with all color points stacked outside of it in a fairly vertical pattern. The end result is that soft, smooth gradient that resembles a sunset in a clear sky. In contrast, putting our color points within the crop region yielded much stronger, more defined color areas.
  
• When enabled, the Lighten Blend checkbox blends the spectrum together in a “lighten” mode.
• Post Saturation allows you to desaturate the spectrum by turning the control down toward total gray at 0. Alternatively, to add more saturation, turn this control up toward 400.
• Post Exposure brightens the spectrum when you adjust up toward 4.0 or darkens the overall look when lowered. The comparison below takes the above image and applies values of -1 (left) and 1 (right).
  
• Chose from the Blend Mode drop-down to select the blending mode used to composite the gradient over the background or in-image if the generator effect is applied to a layer that contains an image or text.
• Opacity allows you to make the spectrum more transparent, if needed, exposing the layers beneath it when Blend Mode is set to None. Alternatively, Opacity exposes the layer to which it is applied when Blend Mode is set to Normal.