Breathe life into every frame with the new Sapphire Dust Effect. S_Dust is blazing-fast, replicates the look of a simple particle simulation without the complexity, and includes rich, user-friendly controls.
It’s perfect for adding a touch of photorealism to CG renders, creating a cinematic atmosphere, and enhancing motion graphics. Set the mood with a few shimmering specks or unleash a turbulent sandstorm.
Create more stunning results by pairing it with other classic Sapphire effects inside S_Effect and S_Transition.
Learn more about Dust |The new parameter linking feature in S_Effect and S_Transition allows editors and artists to create dynamic and complex effects by connecting parameters and values across different Sapphire effects. Users can set a "driver" parameter and then link other parameters to it, including adding offsets and multipliers.
Parameter linking gives users control over an entire effect's animation with a single slider. This makes it easier to create advanced animations and effects without having to manually adjust multiple parameters!
Learn more |The new parameter linking feature in S_Effect and S_Transition allows editors and artists to create dynamic and complex effects by connecting parameters and values across different Sapphire effects. Users can set a "driver" parameter and then link other parameters to it, including adding offsets and multipliers.
Parameter linking gives users control over an entire effect's animation with a single slider. This makes it easier to create advanced animations and effects without having to manually adjust multiple parameters!
The new Quick Access feature provides users with a fast option to find and add effects to Builder. Simply add effects directly into the node graph with just a few clicks rather than navigating Sapphire’s expansive list of effects. Users can also star frequently used effects and add them to the new Favorites category, making them easily accessible.
The 2023.5 update to Sapphire introduces a highly-requested feature: the ability to customize effect parameter names in Builder. Users can now create their own names for any parameter inside any Sapphire effect. By choosing more intuitive and user-friendly parameter names, Builder artists can quickly identify key parameters in an effect and adjust accordingly.
Artists can hit the ground running with stunning looks and professionally-curated transitions thanks to 15 new S_Effect presets and 12 new S_Transition presets — all built out with custom expressions. Plus, 130+ existing S_Effect and S_Transition presets are updated and improved, giving users even more options and refined looks.
Sapphire’s award-winning Lens Flare, renowned across the film & TV industry for gorgeous and natural looking results, now includes 12 more reasons to love it with the addition of new and improved flares for Sapphire 2023.5. Use the integrated Academy Award-winning Mocha technology to do fast and accurate motion tracking directly in the plugin. Perfect flares, wherever you need them.
Created to replicate shooting through a physical prism, S_PrismLens reflects and refracts light to create cinematic and dreamy looks. It’s packed with a feature rich parameter set that allows editors and artists unparalleled freedom and control to create single, linear, and circular reflections. Great for music videos, travelogues, cinematic opens, social media, or even stills — anywhere you wish to create stunning images.
S_PrismLens includes a deep parameter set to create countless prismatic looks. Start in one of three different reflection modes — single, linear, or radial. Modify the lens shape into any type of sphere or polygon, draw with Mocha, or link to any external layer for a custom glass look.
Work with different blending modes for reflection transparency. Add in beautiful chromatic aberration. Apply subtle softening glows, dancing flares, light leaks, or a colorized gradient overlay for a more stylized and cinematic effect. Keyframe the outer shape or inner source material for a handheld look and work with pre-animating glints and lights to add final gloss. Or use Academy Award-winning Mocha tracking to animate your lens shape, isolate and stick the effect to a specific region of interest, or use masking tools to create custom lens shapes.
S_PrismLens features a wide range of starting presets that show off the versatility and breadth of the multifaceted effect. Perfect for applying a quick look or kickstarting your creativity.
Created for the modern VFX artist, editor, and colorist. S_UltraGrain accurately recreates the qualities and aesthetics of film and camera grain with the needed flexibility of a digital toolset. S_UltraGrain makes the art of grain management completely natural and blazing fast thanks to native CUDA and Metal GPU-acceleration.
Take the pain out of accurately reproducing grain profiles. S_UltraGrain includes a library of 80 professionally designed presets featuring the most popular film stocks and digital cameras such as Arri Alexa, Red, Canon, Sony, and more.
Get ready for your favorite new transition based on Sapphire’s most popular transition! S_DissolveUltraGlow adds new features and capabilities with an optical-based glow alongside new parameters for highlights and atmospheric noise. Includes 14 new presets.
Sapphire’s award-winning Lens Flare, renowned across the film & TV industry for gorgeous and natural looking results, now includes 18 more reasons to love it with the addition of new and improved flares for Sapphire 2023. Use the integrated Academy Award-winning Mocha technology to do fast and accurate motion tracking directly in the plugin. Perfect flares, wherever you need them.
Sapphire 2022 introduced faster speeds in Adobe After Effects with up to 1.8 times faster render times with multi-frame rendering. The 2022.5 mid-year update continues the speed improvements with new blazing fast speeds in Resolve, along with new support for multi-GPU workstations. When comparing Sapphire 2022.5 to Sapphire 2022 on systems with matched GPUs, Resolve users can see averages of 2.3 times speed boosts with some multi-effect combos rendering up to 6 times faster.
Sapphire 2022 adds new host support for Adobe Photoshop — and it’s FREE to all Sapphire 2022 users! Featuring 270+ resolution independent and non-destructive effects built into a one-of-a-kind nodal based effects compositor. Photoshop artists will delight at 3000+ easily searchable presets organized by name, type, or intended use. Sapphire Photoshop has the same extensive parameter set as Sapphire plugins, giving artists complete control over every aspect of an effect. Anything created with Sapphire Photoshop can be shared with Sapphire supported hosts including Adobe Premiere Pro, Blackmagic Resolve, Avid Media Composer, Foundry’s Nuke, and many others. Sapphire Photoshop is fully GPU-accelerated with CUDA and Metal support and features native support for Apple M1 processors.
Meet the brand new Sapphire effect: S_ColorFuse! Create cinematic color grades with ease using the one-of-a-kind Sapphire LUT effect. Combine up to three LUTs in different combinations and opacities for limitless choices or choose from one of 50 included presets. Transfer looks between host applications, no LUTs needed — all the info is stored in the S_ColorFuse preset. Maintain accurate color representation by setting the host application colorspace and LUT colorspace (produced in accordance with OCIO standards). S_ColorFuse is fully GPU-accelerated with CUDA and Metal support and renders natively on Apple M1 processors.
S_UltraZap now takes advantage of Sapphire's built-in Mocha planar tracking and spline-based tools. Easily drive electrifying animations by creating tracked splines inside Sapphire’s Mocha interface or importing projects created in Mocha Pro or Mocha AE. All supported hosts now have access to the many advanced UltraZap features previously only available in Adobe After Effects. Whether you’re enhancing a simple logo or diving into a complex VFX shot, the combo of Mocha splines with UltraZap opens up a world of creative possibilities.
The 2022 release features 300+ new curated presets across all Sapphire effects. Each new preset is designed with today’s artists in mind and delivers excellence in form and function. Many older presets have been deprecated and replaced by new modern versions.
Sapphire 2022 features faster speeds and shorter render times in Adobe After Effects with improved support for multi-frame rendering. On average, Sapphire renders are more than 20% quicker with MFR. Individual results can vary based on many factors (CPU, comp size, bit depth, etc). Check out our benchmark results here.
Sapphire 2021 introduces Metal GPU-acceleration with dramatic speed gains on over 60 effects. Metal accelerated effects average 20% faster renders than CPU-only — S_Rays renders over 4x faster. Performance varies depending on GPU specs, host application, OS version, and individual Sapphire effects. Click here for a full list of which Sapphire effects feature Metal acceleration. Click here for a full list of which Sapphire effects feature Metal acceleration in the 2021 release.
UltraGlow is the latest evolution of Sapphire’s legendary Glow, the most popular and loved glow effect in all of post-production. Sapphire 2021’s UltraGlow brings with it all the beauty, speed, and ease of use of S_Glow, but adds many new and unique parameters which create both impressive photorealism and countless dramatic looks. Warning — once you try out Sapphire UltraGlow, you may never go back to using S_Glow again!
UltraGlow emulates a real world optical-based glow, and features a massive amount of controls for customization. Create a primary glow first and then add a secondary “afterglow” for an extra level of photorealism. Control brightness, threshold, falloff, bias, width, primary and secondary colors, streaking, and more.
Brand new Atmosphere and Highlights features make more dynamic glows possible. Highlights introduces auto-animating user-defined sparkles or light sweeps across your image. Atmosphere adds a smoky or misty look to your glow, giving a more diffused or realistic look to the effect.
UltraGlow features an organized parameter layout structured in an order of operations. Spend less time hunting and more time creating.
UltraGlow features GPU acceleration for both Metal and CUDA enabled cards. Mac and PC users experience faster speeds and shorter render times.
Prepare to be shocked at the new addition to 2021— Sapphire UltraZap! A sister effect to S_Zap, used in countless films, TV shows, and commercials, UltraZap blows it out with new parameters and functionality. Featuring a secondary bolt system which wraps around the main bolt, creating photoreal electric bolts, fields, arcs, and currents has never been easier.
UltraZap is perfect for photorealistic lightning and electricity effects. But that is just the beginning. Create gorgeously smooth stroke effects on modern text treatments and stylistic animations that auto loop with no keyframing.
UltraZap can stand on its own with a custom animatable spline structure or it can wrap around a native AE path or type. Easily create custom neon effects or any electrifying motion graphics look.
UltraZap features an independently controllable secondary bolt system with custom position, animation, and color controls. Loop differently constructed bolts on top of the primary bolts for endless looks and custom effects.
Sapphire’s UltraGlow is included as part of UltraZap. Having this new effect inside of UltraZap allows artists to create stunningly realistic glow effects directly inside of UltraZap.
UltraZap features the Academy Award-winning Mocha planar tracking system directly inside the effect. Artists can use Mocha to track the positional data of UltraZap native splines, allowing for the creation of complex animations without a single keyframe.
Starting from a blank slate can always be difficult, that’s why UltraGlow and UItra Zap arrives with more than 40 new presets to get you up and running quickly. Perfect for full screen video treatments and designed for typography. Many fully animate with no need for keyframing. Work smarter, work faster, work better.
Killer lens flares depend on the details— the small things alone don’t impress, but combined make you say “wow!” The 2021 release of Sapphire LensFlare adds two of those small things: the ability to move elements off-axis and adjust their relative speeds.
This release also includes an impressive collection of 10 new flares that showcase these new and recently added features like element shading. The end result is you can now create LensFlares with brand new sophistication and elegance. Sapphire 2021 features our best collection of LensFlares to date!
Sapphire’s Emmy Award-winning Lens Flare, renowned across the film & TV industry, has even more reasons to love it. Every flare element can now be affected by lens shadow, reflecting the real-world experience of a hot light source being shaded and reflecting around a physical lense. The result? Gorgeous natural-looking results on video and motion graphics projects. 2020.5 also features new pro flare presets and remixed old favorites. Sapphire Lens Flares are cross-host, cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) and work in 2D and 3D. And if that wasn’t enough, use the integrated Academy Award-winning Mocha technology to do fast and accurate motion tracking directly in the plugin. Perfect flares, wherever you need them.
Dynamic, modern, and packed with presets. Sapphire 2020.5’s two new transitions — S_HyperPull and S_HyperPush — allow you to move and warp seamlessly between clips. Each transition contains a huge amount of control and variety without having to worry about messy keyframes.
Sapphire 2020.5 now offers full support for Blackmagic Design’s Fusion Studio standalone application and the integrated Fusion inside of Blackmagic Design Resolve. Faster render times, more stable comps, and increased functionality with support for the Sapphire Preset Browser, LensFlare Designer, and integrated Mocha tracking and masking* (standalone Fusion Studio only - Mocha tracking is not yet supported in the integrated Fusion inside of Resolve). Supports Windows, macOS, and Linux operating systems.
Sapphire Builder now supports two new OFX hosts: Nuke by the Foundry and VEGAS Pro. Sapphire Builder lets you combine multiple Sapphire filters into one custom effect. Artists can design, save, and share their work across hosts and departments making it perfect for offline to online workflows. Sapphire 2020.5 also includes new professionally-designed Builder presets to inspire and utilize in your own projects.
Sapphire 2020.5’s integrated Mocha tracking and masking is vastly improved with updates to the area brush tool and edge-snapping technology. And Mocha’s core planar tracking now delivers even more accurate results on complex tracks where objects move around or behind the camera. Flawlessly parameter track or limit where an effect is applied.
The 2020.5 release seriously speeds up CPU and GPU render times and improves interactivity on all lighting effects featuring atmospheric noise, including favorites like S_Glow, S_LensFlare, S_EdgeRays, S_Rays, S_Clouds, and S_Zap.
Meet S_FreeLens. Inspired by the popular photography technique known as free lensing or lens whacking, FreeLens mimics shooting with a lens detached from the camera body. The end result? A dreamy, romantic element featuring a combination of light leaks, lens distortion, tilt shift, and a moving focal point linked together under one easy-to-use master lens manipulation parameter. Perfect for dream sequences, travelogue videos, flashbacks, unsteady POVs, slow-motion footage, motion graphics title treatments or abstract CG renders. S_FreeLens is included in the Blur & Sharpen effects category.
Sapphire 2020 adds support for OpenColorIO (OCIO), the open-source color management solution designed at Sony Picture Imageworks. Sapphire 2020 can apply and read a color profile to provide consistent colors across any of its internal applications such as the Preset Browser, Flare Designer, and Effect & Transition Builder. These applications now feature an OCIO panel with a default library of the most common color profiles. Facilities looking to load a custom OpenColorIO library can do so via an environment variable or by editing the S_Config file to point to a custom location.
Sapphire 2020 also features a new effect in the Adjust category called S_OCIOTransform. The effect allows Sapphire to bring OpenColorIO color management to any of its supported hosts — even if that host hasn’t adopted the OCIO standard yet!
Sapphire 2020 features new and improved Mocha tracking. You can now link Mocha tracking to Sapphire positional parameters all within a single effect. This new feature opens up tons of creative possibilities. Easily track S_LensFlare to a headlight, track S_Zap lighting bolts to the tips of your fingers or track a spotlight over a highlighted subject. Mocha parameter tracking is available in ten Sapphire 2020 effects: LensFlare, EdgeRays, Rays, Luna, Grunge, Spotlight, Aurora, Zap, MuzzleFlash, and FreeLens.
The brand new Mocha Area Brush tool is also included. If you don’t like working with splines, this is for you! The Area Brush lets you paint over track search areas for quick mask creation. Paint strokes are automatically converted into splines for an easy new workflow. Includes full support for Wacom tablets.
Sapphire 2020 adds 16 brand new professionally-designed Lens Flares — bringing the grand total to over 200 flares!
The Sapphire 2020 Preset Browser adds a built-in Compare Mode feature that allows users to preview the original unfiltered source with the filtered output using either side-by-side or wipe bar options. This new feature is especially useful on color correction or grading where you might want to preview adjacent clips in the timeline while working on the filtered source.
The 2020 release delivers the fastest speed results yet thanks to optimized GPU (NVIDIA only) and CPU performance. Users will experience up to a three times increase in render times on many Sapphire effects including S_EdgeRays and S_BlurMotion. Please note: speed increases may vary based upon individual effect, host application, and choice of CPU or GPU rendering. Click the link below for more detailed information.
Brand new for Sapphire 2019.5 effect: S_ParallaxStrips takes any image and divides it into strips separated apart in z space. The floating strips can seamlessly strip apart or form a complete image. Angle, size, speed, z-depth, and many more parameters can be adjusted for original and interesting looks.
S_PixelSort and S_DissolvePixelSort are a fun modern ways to add digital glitchy distortion to your image — and it’s great for music videos or preset looks. PixelSort’s deep parameter set gives you total control over your desired result. Pair it with integrated Mocha tracking and masking or combine it with other effects inside Sapphire Effect and Transition Builder for slick, highly-stylized results.
New in Sapphire 2019.5: All Sapphire applications, the Effect and Transition Builder, Flare Designer, and Preset Browser, have been redesigned from the ground up and now feature a new look perfect for HDPI/Retina monitors. All applications now support video, replacing the previous single frame. The Effect and Transition Builder and Flare Designer also support output to a broadcast monitor.
New to Sapphire 2019 is the reboot of S_LensFlare with a redesigned and reimagined Flare Designer tool. New professionally designed presets, lens objects, flare components, and integrated preset browser showcase the complexity and flexibility behind the powerful Sapphire flare engine.
4.5 hours of lessons, 11 videos organized by categories.
The techniques are shown in an Adobe After Effects workflow but apply to all Sapphire-supported host applications.
Watch it for free or purchase here for downloadable projects and assets.