Adobe After Effects CS4 - Manual (Page 466)

460 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4
Effects and animation presets
Last updated 12/21/2009
Output Cycle controls
Use Preset Palette Presets for the Output Cycle. The top palettes are designed for quick color correction and
adjustment tasks. The bottom choices offer a variety of built-in color palettes for creative results.
Output Cycle Customize the output color palette by altering the colors and locations of the triangles on the Output
Cycle wheel. The triangles specify the location on the color wheel where a specific color occurs. The color between
triangles is smoothly interpolated, unless Interpolate Palette is deselected. Each Output Cycle can have 1-64 triangles.
• To change the location of a triangle, drag the triangle. Shift-drag to snap the triangle to 45-degree increments. At
the top of the wheel, the triangle snaps to either the start position or end position depending on whether you drag
from the left or right.
• To add a triangle, click in or near the wheel, and select a color from the color picker. Click slightly to the left of the
top arrows for the end color, and slightly to the right for the start color.
• To duplicate a triangle, Ctrl-drag (Windows) or Command-drag (Mac OS) the triangle.
• To delete a triangle, drag it away from the wheel.
• To change the opacity, select a triangle on the color wheel and then drag the attached triangle above the opacity
slider. Make sure that Modify Alpha is selected if you want the opacity information to affect your output.
Note: When you animate the Output Cycle, the position and color of a triangle are interpolated between keyframes. For
best results, make sure that all keyframes have the same number of Output Cycle triangles.
Cycle Repetitions How many iterations of the Output Cycle the input color range is mapped to. The default value of
1 maps the input range to one iteration of the Output Cycle, from input black at the top of the Output Cycle wheel,
clockwise to input white at the top of the Output Cycle wheel. A value of 2 maps the input range to two iterations of
the Output Cycle. Use this option to create a simple palette and repeat it many times throughout a gradient.
Interpolate Palette Colors between triangles are interpolated smoothly. When this option is deselected, output colors
are posterized.
Modify controls
Modify controls specify which color attributes the Colorama effect modifies. For subtle refinement of images, choose
the same color attribute for Input Phase and Modify. For example, choose Hue from both menus to simply adjust Hue.
Modify The color attribute to modify.
Modify Alpha Modifies alpha channel values.
Note: If you apply Colorama to a layer with an alpha channel, and the Output Cycle doesn’t contain alpha information,
the anti-aliased edges of the layer may appear pixelated. To smooth the edges, deselect Modify Alpha. If Modify Alpha is
selected and the Output Cycle contains alpha information, the output is affected even if you’ve selected None from the
Modify menu. Using this method, you can adjust the levels of only the alpha channel without also changing the RGB
information.
Change Empty Pixels The influence of the Colorama effect extends to transparent pixels. (This setting works only if
Modify Alpha is selected.)
Pixel Selection, Masking, and other controls
These controls determine which pixels the effect affects. For the Matching controls for Pixel Selection to work,
Matching Mode must be set to anything other than Off.
Matching Color The center of the range of colors of pixels that the Colorama effect modifies. To select a specific color
in the image using the eyedropper, turn off the Colorama effect temporarily by clicking its Effect switch in the Effect
Controls panel.