Chapter 21: Effects and Adjustment Layers

Effects are a stack of image filters carried by a layer. On an ordinary layer they filter that layer alone; on an adjustment layer they filter the composite of everything beneath it, exactly as in After Effects.

Adding an effect

Select one or more layers on the canvas or in the timeline.
Open Layer ▸ Effects and pick an effect.

The effect is appended to the layer’s stack and an Effects section appears in the Layer properties on the right. There is no “add” button inside that section by design — effects always come from the menu.

Layer ▸ Effects ▸ Remove All Effects clears the stack on the selection.

The effect catalogue

Effect	What it does	Parameters
Brightness	Lightens or darkens the layer	Amount 0–200% (default 120)
Saturation	Boosts or drains colour intensity	Amount 0–200% (default 140)
Sepia	Warm monochrome tone	Amount 0–100% (default 100)
Blur	Gaussian blur	Radius 0–50 px (default 6)
Glow	Soft outer glow around opaque pixels	Intensity 0–100%, Radius 4–32 px, Colour
Drop Shadow	Offset shadow cast by the layer	Offset X/Y ±50 px, Blur 0–50 px, Opacity 0–100%, Colour
Vignette	Darkens the edges towards a bright centre	Amount 0–100%, Aperture 10–100%, Colour

The catalogue is deliberately short. An effect only ships when it can render in the browser and has a matching transformation in the server renderer, so what you see in the editor is what the rendered movie shows. Contrast, edge detect, emboss, and bevel are absent for that reason.

Editing the stack

The Effects section in the Layer properties shows one card per effect:

Sliders and colour pickers for that effect’s parameters.
An enable toggle — a disabled effect stays in the stack but stops rendering, which is the fast way to A/B a look.
A trash button to remove that one effect.

Effects apply in stack order, so a Blur followed by a Brightness is not the same as the reverse.

Animating blur and saturation

Two parameters can be keyframed: the Blur radius and the Saturation amount. Their sliders end in a keyframe icon (the zigzag), just like the text scalars in Chapter 4:

Move the playhead to where the value should hold, and click the icon — a keyframe with the slider’s current value lands there. The icon lights up once the lane has keyframes, and stronger while the playhead sits on one.
Move the playhead, drag the slider. Once a lane has a keyframe (or auto-keyframe is on), every slider change records another keyframe at the playhead.
Scrub or play: the slider shows the value at the playhead, and the canvas filter follows it.

The lanes appear in the timeline under the layer as Blur Radius and Saturation Amount, one per effect — two blurs on the same layer animate independently. Easing, moving and deleting keyframes work as for any other lane (Chapter 12). Removing an effect removes its lanes with it.

Typical uses: a rack-focus reveal (radius 20 → 0 over the first second), a defocused background that sharpens as the title lands, a colour drain to monochrome (amount 100 → 0) on an adjustment layer over the whole scene.

The other parameters — Brightness, Sepia, Glow, Drop Shadow, Vignette and every colour — stay static: the renderer has no animation channel for them. To animate one of those looks, put the effect on an adjustment layer and animate the adjustment layer’s opacity or timing instead.

Adjustment layers

An adjustment layer has no content of its own. Its effects apply to the composite of every layer below it in the scene’s stacking order.

Layer ▸ New ▸ Adjustment Layer creates one covering the full canvas. Its properties panel says so explicitly and points you back at Layer ▸ Effects, because an adjustment layer with no effects does nothing at all.

Why use one

Grade a whole scene at once. One vignette + saturation pair on an adjustment layer beats copying the same two effects onto eight layers.
Grade part of a scene. Only layers below the adjustment layer are affected. Move it up or down the stack (Layer ▸ Bring Forward / Send Backward) to change what it touches.
Grade part of a shot. An adjustment layer obeys the ordinary Timing controls, so a blur that only exists between 2 s and 3 s is an adjustment layer with an in-time and a duration.
Fade an effect in. Animate the adjustment layer’s opacity: at 0% the grade is gone, at 100% it is fully applied.

Limits

It carries no media, so there is nothing to select inside it.
Blur radius and saturation amount keyframe on it exactly as on a normal layer; for every other effect, timing and opacity are the animation handles.
Stacking several adjustment layers works, and they compose in order from the bottom up.

Effects vs. the Shadow field

The Transform section also has a Shadow dropdown with box-shadow presets. That is a CSS box shadow on the layer’s box: it follows the rectangle, not the artwork. The Drop Shadow effect follows the layer’s opaque pixels — the right choice for text, logos, and cut-out images.

Troubleshooting

The effect does nothing. Check the enable toggle on the effect card, and check the parameter — Brightness at 100%, Saturation at 100%, or Blur at 0 are all no-ops. If the slider snaps back when you drag it, the lane is keyframed and you are looking at the value at the playhead: move to a keyframe (or add one with the icon) before changing it.

An adjustment layer has no visible result. Either it has no effects yet (Layer ▸ Effects), or every layer sits above it. Send it forward until it is over the layers you want to grade.

The rendered video looks different from the canvas. Report it — the catalogue exists precisely so the two agree. Check first that you are comparing the same frame, and that a track matte or blend mode isn’t interacting with the effect.

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