Lens Flare

Q: What hosts does Sapphire Lens Flare support?

S_LensFlare runs natively in After Effects, Premiere Pro, Avid Media Composer (AVX), DaVinci Resolve, Foundry Nuke, and Vegas Pro, across macOS, Windows and Linux depending on the host. GPU acceleration is available on Nvidia (CUDA), AMD (HIP) and Apple Silicon (Metal). Check the full host compatibility chart for exact supported releases.

Q: Does Sapphire Lens Flare run on Apple Silicon?

Yes. Sapphire is a native Apple Silicon application, and S_LensFlare is GPU-accelerated through Metal on M-series Macs, alongside CUDA on Nvidia and HIP on AMD hardware. No Rosetta, no workaround.

Real glass, rebuilt in software.

Award-Winning anamorphic and spherical flares: modular, Mocha-tracked, and GPU-accelerated.
Every major host — one Sapphire license.

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Industry-Standard Lens Flares for After Effects, Premiere, Resolve, and Avid

Sapphire’s award-winning lens flare tools are the go-to choice for both individual creators and renowned professional post-production studios worldwide. The S_LensFlare effect, which you can apply upon installing Sapphire as a plugin for your favorite host software, creates anamorphic and spherical lens flares for your project, customizable to every individual element.

Through an easy-to-navigate effect controls panel, you can adjust the glare, streaks, rings, caustics, chromatic aberration, and lens artifacts — each with its own set of parameters for complete creative freedom.

Completely Customizable

Adjust every aspect — from size and position to color and occlusion, letting your flare dim and glow behind objects.

174+ Lens Flare Presets

Sapphire features easy-to-use flare presets with additions in every release.

Mocha Tracking

Add realistic movement with Academy Award-winning planar tracking built into every lens flare effect.

GPU Accelerated

Real-time GPU acceleration with Nvidia (CUDA), Apple Silicon (Metal), and AMD (HIP).

Sapphire’s growing library of Lens Flare presets allows you to choose flares handcrafted by professional VFX artists and use them directly in your projects. When a preset gets you close but not all the way there, the Sapphire Flare Designer lets you modify it directly or build entirely personalized flares from scratch, tailored specifically for your project.

Boris FX’s Sapphire suite has been used by studios including Wētā FX, Industrial Light and Magic, and Pixomondo, and was awarded the 2019 Primetime Engineering Emmy.

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What’s New in Sapphire 2026.5

New Version 2026.5

Pro Lens Flares

Cinematic lens flares crafted for modern productions.

The legendary Sapphire lens flare collection is upgraded with stunning new presets and creative controls crafted by professional VFX artists. The updated flare library has detailed, organic optical effects ready to drop into your timeline, ranging from a barely-there glow to full anamorphic streaking.

Watch | 12:14

New Version 2025.5

Redesigned Flare Designer

A fresh, modern UI for building and browsing flares.

Sapphire 2025.5 rebuilt the interface across the Preset Browser, the Effect and Transition Builder, and the Flare Designer. Now, your user experience is smoother and more intuitive thanks to the refined controls, cleaner layouts, and the overall modern refresh brought to the UI.

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Lights. Camera. Lens Flare.

Every Pro Lens Flare is handcrafted by professional VFX artists and inspired by real cinema optics. Drag the handle on each card to compare before and after.

Hawk C-Series 50mm T2.2 @T3.2

Hawk’s 2x anamorphic character, reproduced faithfully — controlled horizontal blue streaking with a clean cinematic falloff. The look widely associated with Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.

Complete Memory

Anamorphic with the dial turned up: heavy blue streaking and full sci-fi mood. Reminds of classic Panavision C-Series optics. For shots that need to feel like a memory rather than a record.

Mir-20 20mm f3.5

The vintage Soviet wide-angle, with its warm cast, hard-edged light rays, and a bloom that spreads with an unmistakable analog softness.

Canon FD 35-105mm ZOOM 50mm T4

Inspired by the classic 1981 Canon FD zoom lens, this flare grabs attention with vivid optical elements, rich gold highlights, and retro purple ghosting.

Sue Sparkles

Chromatic overload, inspired by The Substance. Intense internal reflections, refractions, and lens coating dispersion push the highlight until it fractures into color.

Ares Sunset

Warm, dusty, and strange — drawn from The Martian and real Curiosity Rover photography of the sun setting over Gale Crater.

Supported Hosts

S_LensFlare runs natively across every major editing, compositing, and finishing platform Sapphire supports — on macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Host	Support	Notes
Adobe After Effects	Native	Full Mocha tracking, Flare Designer, Effect Builder integration.
Adobe Premiere Pro	Native	Apply directly on the timeline as a clip effect.
Avid Media Composer	Native AVX	Licensed as Avid-only or Multi-host. macOS and Windows.
Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve	OFX	Available across Edit, Color, Cut, and Fusion pages.
Foundry Nuke	OFX	Node-based integration. macOS, Windows, Linux.
VEGAS Pro	OFX	Windows.

GPU acceleration on Nvidia (CUDA), AMD (HIP), and Apple Silicon (Metal) across all hosts. Full host version compatibility →

Documentation & Tutorials

Look up a specific parameter, or watch how working artists build and track flares from scratch.

Documentation

Full parameter reference for existing users.

Tutorials

Video walkthroughs from Boris FX specialists.

May 27, 2020 Sapphire: New in S_LensFlare What's New3 min
November 19, 2025 Top Tips for Better Lens Flares with Sapphire Tutorial11 min
April 11, 2024 Sapphire: Lens Flare Medley Tutorial1 min

All Lens Flare Tutorials

Need Help? We've Got You!

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A place for Sapphire users to discuss tips, tricks, product feature requests, and best practices.

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Help Center

Search technical questions or open a ticket with our knowledgeable support team.

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Join our Sapphire Discord to exchange tips, get quick help, and connect with fellow VFX artists.

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Frequently asked questions

What is the best plugin for lens flares in After Effects?

Sapphire’s S_LensFlare is the long-standing choice for cinematic flares in After Effects. Rather than compositing a stock image over your footage, it builds anamorphic and spherical flares from individual optical elements — glare, streaks, iris rings, caustics, glints, chromatic aberration, and lens artifacts — which is why they hold up under close inspection and under a grade. The Flare Designer lets you modify any preset or build a flare from nothing, element by element, and Pro Lens Flare Packs modeled on real cinema glass arrive with every release. With Academy Award-winning Mocha tracking built into the effect, a flare can follow a practical light through the shot without individually keyframing by hand.

Can I track a lens flare to a moving light source?

Yes, and you don’t need to keyframe it. Academy Award-winning Mocha planar tracking is built into every Sapphire effect, so you can track a flare’s hotspot and pivot to a practical lamp, a headlight, or any moving highlight in the plate, then drive the flare’s position parameters directly from that track. S_LensFlareAutoTrack takes the shortcut further by following the brightest point in frame automatically — usually the fastest route from “apply” to “done.”

What hosts does Sapphire Lens Flare support?

What are Pro Lens Flare Packs and are they included in my license?

Pro Lens Flare Packs are flare presets handcrafted by professional VFX artists, each modelled on real cinema optics or a recognisable film look — Hawk anamorphic, vintage Canon FD glass, flares built from The Substance and The Martian. They’re included with Sapphire at no extra cost, and new packs ship with every release, so an active subscription or a perpetual license with an active upgrade and support plan keeps your library growing without any additional purchase.

Can I build a custom lens flare from scratch?

Yes. The Flare Designer is a dedicated build interface: add glares, streaks, rings, caustics, iris shapes and lens artifacts, arrange them along the flare axis, and set each element’s colour, position, scale and falloff independently. Start from any Pro Lens Flare preset and modify it, or start from an empty flare and design your own. Save the result as a preset and it’s reusable across both projects and host apps.

Does Sapphire Lens Flare run on Apple Silicon?

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Not Ready to Purchase Yet?

Simply download the Boris FX Hub and install Sapphire. After installation, Sapphire will run in a fully functional watermarked trial — perfect for auditioning all effects including S_LensFlare.

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Lens Flare