Universe

SOFT GRADIENT BACKGROUND

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Getting Started

1. Drag the effect onto your clip.
2. Click the Browse Presets button to see a preview of all the presets available. Double-click any preset to apply. The preset menu gives you quick starting points on a variety of Colored gradient background styles: Aqua Radial, Green Yellow, Linear Purple, or Orange Pink.

Modify the Effect

• The Source Image drop-down menu allow you to choose between the default Fractal Noise pattern or choose the Source option to have the gradient be affected by the footage that the effect is applied to.
• If you’ve chosen the Source option as your Source Image, you may use the controls in the Source Adjust group to further manipulate how the gradient appears using the Source Blur, Saturation, and Exposure.
• If you’ve chosen the Fractal Noise option in the Source Image menu, you may use the controls in the Fractal Noise group to animate and change how the Fractal Noise appears in the image.
• When the initial color scheme of the gradient is set by the Preset menu, you may open the Color Map Group to access the 4 color pickers controls to further customize the look of your background.
  • The Gradient Type drop-down allows you to set the gradient to either display in a Linear or Radial pattern.
  • Use the Gradient Center control to reposition the gradient within the frame.
  • Change the look of the gradient by using the Gradient Scale slider to expand or shrink the size of the gradient displayed. Turn it to a smaller number to compress the gradient, or a higher number to expand the gradient.
  • To change the colors appearing in the gradient, use the Highlight, Mid High, Mid Low, and Shadow Color Pickers.
  • The Mid High and Mid Low Adjust controls are useful in setting how the color points are feathered out across the gradient. Bring these sliders up from 0 to feather the edge of these lines in the gradient.
  • Chose from the Blend Mode drop-down to select the blending mode used to composite the Color Map result over the Source Image map.
  • The Color Mix slider gives you control over the blending opacity of the Color Map over the source map. Turn it up to 100% to make it completely opaque or bring it down lower to make it more transparent.
• The Texture group allows you to change the look of the overlaid texture of the effect.
  • Choose from 6 texture types from the Texture drop-down menu to find the desired look for your footage.
  • You can change the size of the texture using the Scale slider.
  • The Center controls allow you to reposition the center of the texture on the canvas using the X and Y numerical controls or the crosshair selector.
  • You can make the overlaid texture more transparent by turning down the Texture Opacity control.
  • Bringing up the Texture Contrast control will darken the contrast within the texture.
  • Raising the Texture Blur control will soften the focus and detail of the texture map.
  • Turning up the Texture Colorize control will add the color of the Mid Low color selected in the Color Map section to the Texture overlaid on the image.
  • Mask : By default, the texture is Masked so it appears at the edges of the frame and blurs towards the center.
    • Turn the Enable Mask control off to disable this effect and have the texture appear across the whole of the frame.
    • The Scale will scale the mask up or down in the range from 0-400% across the image.
    • The Center control allows you to move the position of the mask along the X and Y axis using the cross-hair or numerical controls.
    • The shape of the masked area can be changed by adjusting the Aspect control. Turn this slider down toward 0 to spread it out horizontally, or up towards 10.0 to squeeze it vertically.
    • The Falloff control will soften the edge of the mask for a more subtle difference between the footage and the texturized masked vignette.
    • Chose from the Texture Blend Mode drop-down to select the blending mode used to composite the Texture result over the Source Image map.
• The Vignette group adds subtle darkness to the edges of the frame.
  • Use the Center control to change the location of the vignette with the cross-hair point position or the numerical controls of the X or Y axis.
  • The Radius control adjust how large the vignette shape is on the screen.
  • The Aspect control, set at 0.8 by default, allows you to change the aspect ratio of the result. Turn it up to 20.0 to compress the blur towards the center making it taller vertically or turn it down to 0.0 to stretch it out horizontally.
  • The Falloff slider allows you to smooth out the edge area around the Center point to create a more subtle transition around the edge of the Vignette.
  • When brought up towards 100, the Strength control increases how strongly the vignette is applied to the overall effect.
  • Use the Color control to set the color of the vignette.
• The Post Contrast slider allows you to adjust the overall difference between light and dark within the effect.