I have spent the past couple of days experimenting with all the Post Effects in Animation Master in order to figure out what each does and how to use it. Hopefully I will understand them enough to write a short tutorial about them next week, so please read through what I've found so far and post here if any of my information is wrong, or does not match your experience with them. Thanks!
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QUESTIONS:
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Blur: Style (8mm, 16mm, 35mm): Are these referring to camera lens types? Different film sizes? ???
Denoise: - What do these properties of the Denoise effect do?
P: ??
Anisotropy: ??
Iterations: ??
Dt: ??
Over: - The Over effect does not appear to do anything at all. How do I use this effect?
Unpremultiply: Turns an image black as far as I can tell, but doesn't seem to do anything else. Does this effect need something special in order to work?
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FINDINGS:
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Bloom: Creates halo effects in an image
(requires) - Any image or animation
Strength: Determines how much to lighten the light areas.
Threshold: Determines how much to lighten the dark areas.
Radius: Determines how many surrounding pixes of the affected light and dark areas will also be affected.
Blur: Blurs an image
(requires) - Any image or animation
Style (8mm, 16mm, 35mm): Are these referring to camera lens types? Different film sizes? ???
Softness: Determines how much the image is blurred
Denoise: Smears an image, making it appear smoother
(requires) - Any image or animation
Alpha: Adds a "watercolor" effect. Higher values make the effect more pronounced.
Sigma: Adds a slight "motion blur" effect. Higher values increase the effect.
P: ??
Anisotropy: ??
Iterations: ??
Dt: ??
Dither: Turns all gradations into a series of dots.
(requires) - Any image or animation
Bits Per Channel: Presets for image formats with various bit depths.
Levels: Determines how pronounced the "dot effect" is. Lower values make the effect more pronounced.
Divide: Increases the contrast of the first image while overlaying a negative of the second image.
(requires) - Two image or animation "Color" or "ColorAlpha" items. These items can be found by clicking on the + (plus) sign to the left of an image in the <Images> folder.
Exposure: Affects both Brightness and Contrast at the same time.
Brightness: Affects the overall brightness of an image.
Contrast: Affects the tonal range between the dark and light areas on an image. Higher values decrease the tonal range, creating more definition between light and dark areas.
Film Grain: Adds random monochrome noise to an image.
(requires) - Any image or animation.
Size: The size of the random noise splotches.
Amount: How many splotches are produced.
FrameBurn: Adds frame numbers and the cirrent file name along the top edge of an animation.
(requires) - image sequence or movie file.
Gamma: Affects the overall brightness of an image.
(requires) - any image or animation
HSE: Affects the Hue, Saturation and Brightness of an image.
(requires) - any image or animation.
Hue: Affects the overall color balance of an image. Shifts all colors in the image towards red, blue, green etc.
Saturation: Affects how vibrant the colors appear.
Exposure: Affects both the brightness and contrast of the image. Higher values increase both brightness and contrast.
Merge: Acts much like "Blending Modes" in Photoshop. Blends two images according to various algorithms.
(requires) - Two image or animation "Color" or "ColorAlpha" items. These items can be found by clicking on the + (plus) sign to the left of an image in the <Images> folder.
Merge Operation: The algorithm used to blend the images. There are too many to describe each one. Experiment!
Minimum Median Maximum: Transposes red and blue hues (turns red colors blue and blue colors red) while also separating tonal values into distinct blocks, causing the image to appear like a mosaic of painterly blocks.
(requires) - any image or animation
Style: Presets that automatically adjust the "Position Minimum to Maximum" property.
Position Minimum to Maximum: Determines which tonal ranges are most affected. 0% = the dark tones. 50% = the midtones. 100% = the highlights.
Radius: Controls how large the blocks are.
Round: Determines if the blocks are round or square. "ON" means they are round.
Mix: Blends two images together, multiplying the light areas.
(requires) - Two image or animation "Color" or "ColorAlpha" items. These items can be found by clicking on the + (plus) sign to the left of an image in the <Images> folder.
Input1 Percent: Determines the brightness of the first image. Negative values make the image appear like a film negative.
Input2 Percent: Determines the brightness of the second image. Negative values make the image appear like a film negative.
Multiply: Behaves like the "Multiply" blend mode in Photoshop.
(requires) - Two image or animation "Color" or "ColorAlpha" items. These items can be found by clicking on the + (plus) sign to the left of an image in the <Images> folder.
Over: Appears to do nothing at all.
Tint: Creates a two-tone or duotone effect.
(requires) - any image or animation.
Light Color: The color to use for the highlights.
Dark Color: The color to use for the darker tones.
Percent: Determines how strong the effect is. "100%" completely replaces the original colors with the duotone effect. "0%" preserves all the original colors as if this effect were no applied at all.
Unpremultiply: Turns an image black (as far as I can tell).
(requires) - ??? Does this effect need something special in order to work?
Video Safe: Changes the saturation of colors in the image so they will look OK on a television.
Video Format: Determines which video format to target, PAL or NTSC.