Changelog

Meet Halation

Add warm film halation around bright highlights.

The new Halation effect recreates the red-orange glow found in Kodak Vision3, scanned analog film, and cinematic night footage. Use it to add organic highlight bloom around street lights, neon signs, headlights, sunsets, and backlit subjects for a more photographic film look.

• Threshold control for highlight selection
• Knee control for smooth highlight rolloff
• Boost control for stronger extracted glow
• Local Diffusion and Global Diffusion controls for halo spread
• Intensity, Hue, Background Gain, and Compensation controls for final color and blend

Meet Film Grain

Add scanned analog grain from real film stocks.

The new Film Grain effect brings texture-based film grain into the editor with a curated set of Agfa, Fuji, Ilford, Kodak, and Rollei stocks. Use it to add subtle cinematic texture, rough black-and-white grain, vintage photo character, or animated video grain with direct control over amount, tonal response, and frame movement.

• 18 built-in film grain stocks
• Agfa, Fuji, Ilford, Kodak, and Rollei grain textures
• Color and black-and-white grain options
• Separate grain weighting for shadows, midtones, and highlights
• Frame Interval control for static or animated grain

Vignette update

Shape, place, and blend vignettes with more control.

The updated Vignette effect adds selectable border shapes, placement controls, color compositing, global blending, and dithering for smoother gradients.

• Border Shape options: Oval, Triangle, Diamond, Rectangle, Hexagon, and Octagon
• Size, anamorphism, rotation, and center controls
• Softness and transparency controls
• Vignette color picker
• Composite Type options: Normal, Add, Subtract, Difference, Multiply, Screen, Overlay, Hard light, Softlight, and Darken
• Global blend control
• Dithering toggle

Meet Black & White Film

Apply classic monochrome film grades.

The new Black & White Film effect brings curated B&W film LUTs into the editor, from Agfa Scala 200 and Ilford Delta to FP4, HP5, and Kodak Tri-X. Use it for timeless portraits, street photography, film noir lighting, documentary-style video, or clean fine-art monochrome edits with a two-axis Amount control for contrast and filter intensity.

• 7 built-in black and white film LUTs
• Agfa Scala 200 inspired black and white reversal look
• Ilford Delta 100, 400, and 3200 LUT options
• Ilford FP4 and HP5 inspired classic monochrome styles
• Kodak Tri-X inspired documentary black and white contrast
• Independent control for contrast and filter intensity

Blob Tracker is here

Track detected blobs with boxes, labels, and paths.

The new Blob Tracker effect finds connected bright or keyed regions in images and video, then draws real-time tracking overlays. Use it for computer vision inspired visuals, motion analysis, surveillance style graphics, or generative diagrams that connect detected targets.

• Key color detection with threshold and persistence controls
• Stable blob tracking with bounding boxes and center markers
• Caption labels using the bundled monospace atlas
• Box shapes: full, angle corners, and circle
• Palette, blend, opacity, thickness, and fill controls
• Straight, arched, smooth, dashed, and arrow path styles

Meet Vintage Film

Apply classic analog film color grades.

The new Vintage Film effect brings a curated set of retro film-stock LUTs into the editor, from Agfacolor and Autochrome to Kodachrome, Kodak Gold, Ultramax, and Technicolor. Use it to recreate faded family-photo warmth, mid-century editorial color, or bold early cinema palettes with a single Vintage LUT selector and a two-axis Amount control that blends color and lightness independently.

• 12 built-in vintage film LUTs
• Agfacolor 40s, 50s, and 60s looks
• Kodachrome, Kodak Gold, and Ultramax stock emulations
• Technicolor and Autochrome options for early color aesthetics
• Independent strength control for color and tone

Meet Keyframes!

Create complex animated effects right in the browser.

Add keyframes to effect controls, change values over time to make dynamic effects. Click the animation button next to a value label to start animating it. Move along the timeline and add more keyframes as the value changes. To adjust the animation length, click the time duration button in the timeline.

You can drag keyframes to change their timing, edit the selected keyframe by adjusting the original slider, or delete focused keyframes when you no longer need them. Right-click on a keyframe to select its interpolation curve, ranging from clean linear motion to softer easing and elastic movement.

Keyframes are saved with presets, too. This means that animated looks can be stored, reused and published to community.

Add keyframes from supported effect sliders.

• Scrub, play, loop and click the duration button to adjust the animation time.
• Drag keyframes to adjust the timing.
• Edit selected keyframes from the original control.
• Right-click on keyframes to select interpolation curves.
• Save keyframes inside presets.

Available with the new Animate plan.

Meet Motion Trails

Create long exposure trails and glowing motion traces.

The new Motion Trails effect accumulates bright highlights over time to create long exposure light trails, drifting traces, and video feedback streaks. Use it for night footage, dance clips, light painting, music videos, or stylized motion graphics with direct control over trail length, drift, shake, blend mode, and source dimming.

• Highlight threshold and knee controls
• Adjustable trail fade with per-frame dimming
• Directional drift and shake controls
• Intensity and source dim controls
• Blend modes for add, screen, overlay, soft light, hard light, color dodge, and lighten

Meet Star Glow

Try the new dreamy starburst glow effect!

The new Star Glow effect creates a digital star filter look by extracting bright highlights and extending them into multidirectional light streaks. Use it to create cross-screen sparkles, stylized starburst rays, or longer directional streaks that you can control in terms of length, falloff, angle, and color tint.

• Highlight threshold and knee controls
• Streak count and sample density controls
• Adjustable streak length with alternate-length shaping
• Angle rotation for directional star patterns
• Falloff control for tighter or softer streak decay
• Gradient tint and gradient shift for colored rays

VHS Effect

Authentic magnetic tape simulation with tracking errors and color bleeding.

The new VHS effect recreates VHS camcorder and video tape degradation from the 1980s–90s. It simulates analog tape artifacts including tracking noise, vertical jump, wobble, tape crease, dropout sparkle, and chromatic bleeding for authentic retro video aesthetics.

• Simulates worn magnetic tape with horizontal tracking errors
• Creates unstable playback with wobble and frame jumping
• Generates tape damage artifacts: creases, dropout, sparkle
• Reproduces VHS color separation and chromatic bleeding
• Adjustable degradation from fresh tape to heavily worn
• Temporal blur and color delay for authentic analog motion

Texture displacement

Distort footage with a custom texture.

The new Texture displacement effect uses a custom displacement map to push pixels based on texture brightness. Use it to create fluid warps, ripples, and organic distortions with full control over map fitting, scaling, and blur smoothing.

• Custom displacement texture input
• Fit modes: Fill, Stretch, Tile
• Texture scale control
• Map curve shaping
• Map blur smoothing
• Displacement amount control

Try new video export

Your export now looks exactly like your preview.

Previously, export quality depended on how busy your system was at the time. Under load, frames could drop, duplicate, or come out at the wrong rate.

Export is now a frame-by-frame WebCodecs pipeline. Each frame is decoded individually, processed by the WebGL effect, and re-encoded at the target bitrate. The output is deterministic: what you see is what you get.

• Frame-accurate output. No dropped or duplicated frames
• Stable fps and bitrate regardless of system load
• Fixed black and duplicate frames on Windows Chrome
• Cancel button during export
• Firefox fallback via MediaRecorder

Community presets

Discover presets from other creators and share your own.

You can now publish your local presets to the community. Once shared, they will appear in the Explore panel, where they can be discovered and applied by anyone.

When editing a preset, you can automatically capture your current canvas as a before-and-after preview.

Meet Gradient map

Replace tones with a custom gradient.

The new Gradient map effect maps shadows, midtones, and highlights to any colors you choose. Colors are blended in OKLCH for a vivid, perceptually smooth look.

Editing the gradient: Double-click the bar to add a stop; drag stops to change where each color sits. Alt+click a stop to remove it (you always keep at least two). The small pivot markers between stops control interpolation: click a pivot to cycle linear → smooth → constant; drag a pivot to move the midpoint and shift where the blend between two colors happens.

• Custom gradient with unlimited color stops
• Gradient shift and repeat for tiling and offset
• Linear, smooth, and constant interpolation per segment
• OKLCH color blending for vivid, even transitions

Presets update

Presets are now located in the side panel!

Click the Create Preset button at the top of the Layers panel to open the creation modal. This will automatically capture the current canvas as a cover, providing you with a visual reference for what the preset does. You can replace the cover at any time by loading a custom image.

• New Create Preset button at the top of the panel
• Creation modal auto-captures the current canvas as a cover
• Load a custom image as a cover and replace it any time

Ink Bleed Effect

Create ink bleed with custom mask control.

Introduced a new Ink Bleed effect for simulating analog ink spread and imperfect print texture on both images and video. Shape where the bleed happens using a custom spread mask, then refine transitions with mask contrast curve control.

• Spread, intensity, and decay controls
• Directional flow and noise size shaping
• Grain amount and grain size controls
• Custom mask input for localized bleed
• Mask contrast curve and mask strength control
• Show mask preview and optional ink reset timer

Meet Texture Blur

Shape blur with custom textures.

This new Texture Blur effect uses a texture map to control bokeh blur strength per pixel. Paint a focus band, map depth, or use organic textures to sculpt blur falloff.

• Custom texture map input
• Fit modes: Fill, Stretch, Tile
• Texture scale control
• Depth curve shaping
• Highlight boost for bokeh glow

Curves Effect

Made for precise tone and color grading.

Introducing the new Curves effect for refined tonal shaping and RGB channel control. Use it to build cinematic contrast, lift shadows for matte looks, or create stylized color grades with smooth, continuous adjustments.

• Full tonal curve control
• Individual RGB channel curves
• Smooth highlight and shadow shaping
• Ideal for film looks and color correction

New Layer Mix

Blend custom textures with min/max range controls.

This new Layer Mix effect brings professional layer blending to your workflow. It allows you to blend custom textures over photos and videos. Use Photoshop-style blend-if controls to reveal highlights, midtones, or shadows based on lightness values. It's perfect for creating cracked paint overlays, grunge paper effects, film dirt, dust, ink bleed, and artistic collage compositions.

• Load custom texture or base image
• Multiple fit type options (Fill, Stretch, Tile)
• Adjustable texture scale
• Blend channel control
• Current layer range with min/max sliders
• Underlying layer range controls
• Shoulder adjustments for smooth transitions
• Opacity and blend mode options

Meet Depth of Field

Try the real-time bokeh blur effect.

This new Depth of Field effect creates a depth of field effect with a bokeh blur. Perfect for adding a soft focus to your images and videos, this effect simulates professional camera bokeh with customizable aperture shapes and characteristics.

• Configurable mask positioning with interactive controls
• Adjustable blur radius and strength
• Blade count control
• Blade roundness adjustment
• Aperture rotation and feather controls
• Anamorphic stretch
• Catadioptric (mirror lens)
• Customizable falloff

New Reeded Glass effect

Play with different refraction patterns.

This new Reeded Glass effect simulates the visual characteristics of textured architectural glass with parallel ridges. The effect creates realistic light refraction and distortion patterns similar to decorative glass panels commonly used in doors and windows.

• Customizable glass pattern types
• Adjustable pattern controls
• Chromatic dispersion
• Animated shift controls for dynamic effects
• Reflection strength and scale parameters
• Glass imperfections texture overlay

New ASCII effect

Convert images into text-based art.

Introduced a new ASCII effect that converts images into text-based art using monospaced characters. This effect analyzes the brightness of each region and replaces it with an appropriate ASCII character, creating a distinctive retro computing aesthetic.

• Multiple character set options
• Adjustable grid density
• Customizable colors
• Brightness threshold and contrast adjustments

Mobile Layers Panel

The mobile interface now includes a dedicated layers panel, bringing the full layer management experience to smartphones and tablets. Mobile users can now view, reorder, toggle visibility, and manage multiple effect layers with touch-optimized controls.

New Elastic Grid effect

Introduced a new Elastic Grid effect that divides the image into a flexible grid with dynamic distortion. Each grid point can be stretched or compressed based on configurable noise patterns, creating fluid, organic deformations.

• Independent X and Y grid division controls
• Adjustable stretch amount and effect radius
• Animated noise-based distortion
• Configurable noise
• Loop controls for seamless animations

New Paper Scan effect

This new Paper Scan effect overlays realistic paper textures onto images, simulating the look of scanned documents or printed materials. This effect uses generated noise patterns to create authentic paper grain and texture variations.

• Black and white paper texture modes
• Adjustable opacity and texture scale
• Brightness and contrast controls
• Configurable distortion intensity and scale
• Realistic paper grain simulation

Ideal for creating vintage document effects, aged paper looks, or adding tactile texture to digital artwork.

New Modulation effect

This new Modulation effect applies advanced signal processing techniques to transform images using frequency modulation (FM) and demodulation algorithms. This effect simulates the characteristics of analog signal transmission, creating unique visual distortions and patterns based on the color information of the image.

• Adjustable wave scale and frequency control
• FM sensitivity for modulation depth
• Signal strength amplitude control
• Four directional wave processing modes
• Individual RGB channel modulation toggles
• Two-stage processing with modulation and demodulation

New Threshold effect

New Threshold effect that combines edge detection with customizable threshold processing.

• Adjustable luminance threshold control
• Edge mode with distance and offset parameters
• Configurable outline generation with strength and type options
• Multiple blend modes
• Custom color selection

Perfect for creating stylized illustrations, enhancing edge details, or generating artistic line-art effects from photographs.

New Bloom effect

Introduced a new Bloom effect that creates beautiful light diffusion and glow effects. This effect simulates the way bright light bleeds into surrounding areas, creating a dreamy, ethereal atmosphere perfect for enhancing highlights and creating cinematic lighting.

• Control which pixels contribute to the bloom
• Adjust the strength of the effect
• Fine-tune the radius and spread
• Choose blending mode
• Manage exposure and dynamic range

Perfect for creating magical, luminous effects and adding professional lighting touches to your content.

Favourites submenu

The effects menu now has a new “Favorites” submenu. All your saved effects will appear there.

Added Explore Page

We just launched the Explore page, your new hub for discovering all that Effect.app has to offer.

• Browse all effects and curated presets in one organized gallery
• Save your favorites to your personal library (login required)

Find the Explore page in the left sidebar navigation and start exploring today.

New Dither Effect

Introduced a new Dither effect that applies advanced color quantization with precise dithering patterns and customizable palettes. This effect reduces color banding, adds artistic texture, and recreates the distinctive look of retro digital graphics.

• 23 dithering patterns
• 12 curated color palettes
• Adjustable color count (2–18 colors)
• Pixelation control with logarithmic scaling
• RGB and Luma distance color matching
• Gamma correction & dither strength sliders
• Real-time preview with instant updates

Perfect for vintage game looks or adding a unique visual texture. The Dither effect works in real-time with both images and video.

Chrome Extension Release

You can now open any image from the web directly into Effect.app with our official
Chrome Extension. Right-click an image → “Edit in EFFECT.APP” → and it instantly opens in Effect.app with all effects available.

Added Emboss Effect

Introduced a new Emboss effect that transforms flat images into raised, dimensional surfaces with realistic lighting and shadows. This effect uses normal mapping and matcap technology to generate embossed textures that dynamically respond to light direction.

Key features:

• 36 materials
• Dynamic shadow casting
• Configurable light direction
• Highlight effects
• Depth-based darkening
• Gradient overlay

Ideal for metallic textures, embossed logos, and adding professional depth to design work. The Emboss effect provides real-time feedback as you adjust parameters.

Link and Random image import

You can now import images from a URL or get a random image from Unsplash.

This feature allows you to quickly test effects with different images without needing to download them first. Simply paste a link to any image or click the “Random Image” button to fetch a new photo from Unsplash.

Hover over the media loader to see the new import options, or use the keyboard shortcuts:

Ctrl/Cmd + Alt + L — Import image from URL

Ctrl/Cmd + Alt + O — Import random image

Mobile Export Improvements

On mobile, exports now open your system’s native Share dialog instead of saving to files — making it easier to send output to apps, chats, or social platforms.

Preset Link Sharing

Share your creative configurations instantly with others through direct links. When you create a preset, you can now generate a shareable URL that opens Effect.app with your exact settings applied. Recipients can immediately see your effect configuration and use it as a starting point for their own work.

The sharing flow: copy preset → send link → recipient opens the effect with your settings loaded automatically (see example preset).

Figma Plugin Updates

The plugin window is now resizable, allowing users to drag it wider or narrower to better fit their workspace layout and design preferences.

Saved frames now appear as a fill on the selected layer without creating additional frame objects, maintaining a cleaner layer structure in your Figma files.

Mobile Interface Enhancements

Added essential controls to the mobile interface, including user authentication and the complete undo/redo system. Mobile users now have access to the same history management capabilities as desktop users, along with seamless login functionality for accessing premium features and saved presets.

NTSC Video Effect

Introduced a new analog television simulation effect that recreates the authentic look of NTSC broadcast video. This effect captures the characteristic artifacts, color bleeding, and signal degradation of analog video transmission.

NTSC effect transforms digital content through the complete analog conversion cycle: digital input → simulated analog processing → digital output with authentic NTSC characteristics.

PRO Plan Launch

Launched the professional tier with enhanced capabilities for serious creators and commercial users. PRO subscribers gain access to watermark-free exports, preset saving and sharing, 4K resolution output, and the ability to export animated effects applied to still images.

Undo and Redo System

Complete action history management is now available across Effect.app. Every modification you make is tracked and reversible, eliminating the fear of experimenting with settings or accidentally breaking your work.

Keyboard shortcuts:

Ctrl/Cmd + Z — Undo last action

Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + Z — Redo previously undone action

Tracked actions include parameter adjustments, layer visibility toggles, layer reordering, and layer deletions. The system maintains up to 50 steps in the history.

Effect Dock Interface

Introduced a streamlined effect application system that dramatically speeds up creative exploration. The dock provides instant effect application with a single click, automatically generating randomized parameter settings.

Quick actions:

Click — Apply effect with random settings

Shift + Click — Apply effect to a new layer

Figma Plugin Release

Published the official Effect.app plugin for Figma, bringing real-time image and video effects directly into design workflows.

Available in the Figma Community:
Effect.app Plugin

Enhanced Noise Effect Controls

Expanded the noise effect with granular control over texture characteristics and placement.

New parameters:

• Size — Adjusts grain scale
• Chroma — Controls color saturation
• Shadows / Mids / Highlights — Targeted tonal control
• Speed — Animation control

These controls enable more sophisticated noise application, from subtle film grain to dramatic overlays.

Mobile Platform Support

Launched full mobile support, bringing the complete Effect.app experience to smartphones and tablets. The mobile interface provides touch-optimized controls.

Dither Effect Pixel Control

Added pixel-size control to the Dither effect, enabling precise adjustment of dithering granularity. You can now control the scale of dithering patterns, from fine sub-pixel dithering to large visible pixel blocks.