Quantum creates the illusion of an animated light trail in front of or behind a layer. Customize the effect for speed, complexity, and looping shimmer animations before or behind your on-screen elements to really make your titles or graphics pop with vibrance!
Presets
Discover a seeming multiverse of multifarious presets already bundled within Quantum. Find these 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 Quantum look and then save it under its own name by pressing the Save Preset... button.
Modify the Effect
Position changes the location of the point with the cross-hair point position. Alternatively, use the numerical controls of the x and/or y axes.
Notice in the image below how we place the Position point off our comp to achieve the desired effect angle.
Input Channel determines if the glow emanates from the layer's Alpha (default), Luminance, Lightness, Red, Green, or Blue channel.
In the above image, there's no transparency, so Alpha has almost no effect. Lightness delivered the best results in this case.
Threshold sets the luminance level above which highlights are picked up by the glow.
Threshold Softness adds softness to the boundaries of the threshold region.
Threshold Blur adjusts the sharpness or blurriness of the glow effect.
In the below comparison, we raised this value from 0 (left) to 40 (right) to give the ship's forward edge a softer, more realistic haze.
Streak Length allows you to adjust the length of the rays from the edges of the applied layer to the Position set above. Note the impact of negative values, as shown in this comparison of -50 (left) and 50.
Boost Light increases the glow effect's brightness.
Glow 1/2/3 contain parameters that adjust individual glows created from the effect. To give a sense of how these glows overlap and influence a final effect, consider the following examples. Note how we isolate Glow 1 (top left), Glow 2 (top right), and Glow 3 (bottom left) separately, then combine them all (bottom right).
Enable Glow toggles whether the individual glow effect is visible.
Glow 1/2/3 Length adjusts how far along the Streak Length the glow effect reaches.
Glow 1 Intensity adjusts the glow brightness. The higher the value, the less opacity the effect has.
Choose Color Map brings up an array of color presets which will populate the Highlights, Midtones, and Shadows swatches (below) in their respective order.
Highlights,Midtones, and Shadows provide color swatches to set values manually.
Shimmer adds an optional looped effect wherein the glow's rays animate in length and intensity by way of a fractal.
Amount sets how much the shimmer disrupts the glow effect's set values.
The above clip uses a value of 50.
Scale adjusts the size of the fractal used to create the shimmer effect. Higher values result in thinner rays. Lower values result in wider rays.
Complexity sets the fractal's granular detail, which adjusts how many rays do or don't pass through the shimmer effect. Lower values result in fewer rays. Higher values result in more rays.
Animation Speed sets the speed of the shimmering effect's looped cycle.
Loop Duration (Sec) adjusts how many seconds the looped shimmer lasts.
Post Glow adds an additional glow on top of the effect's source, shimmer, and streaks.
Glow Threshold sets the luminance level above which highlights are picked up by the post glow.
Mix adjusts the glow effect's opacity over the effect's shimmer and streak glows.
Radius defines the size of the post glow effect in relation to its emanating source.
Inner Glow Radius sets the glow's scale inward onto the source from which it emanates.
Inner Glow Mix adjusts the opacity of the inner glow effect onto the source from which it emanates.
Inner Glow Color sets the color of the inner glow effect.
Mask
To begin, enable the Use Mask checkbox to constrain the glow to the masked area.
To see your mask more clearly and adjust it to your liking, enable the Show Masked Area checkbox.
Select an option from the Shape drop-down menu to set the mask as either an elliptical or rectangular shape.
Mask Position changes the location of the mask with the cross-hair point position or numerical controls for the x and y axes.
Mask Width and Mask Height adjust the size of the mask along the x and y axes.
Link Width/Height toggles whether the Mask Width slider also sets Mask Height.
Mask Rotation sets the angle of the mask's shape rotation along its center axis.
Mask Feather increases the mask's edge translucency along a gradient.
Invert Mask switches the glow effect to occur outside the selected mask shape instead of inside.
Putting these controls together, we created a mask that covered the moon and its Niven ring (shown above),
thereby excluding the rest of the image. Then, we checked Invert Mask to cover only the moon and ring.
Because the approaching spaceship is the only other light source in the image, the end result can make it
appear that the craft is perhaps dropping out of hyperspace as it nears the moon.
Quantum Opacity adjusts the glow effect's transparency.
This can be especially helpful with situations in which Quantum's streaks obscure too much of the underlying image.
Source Opacity adjusts the transparency of the source to which the effect is applied.
Use the
Blend Mode
drop-down to select the blending mode for compositing the Quantum result over the original image.
