ArionFX for Photoshop
ArionFX for After Effects-
ArionFX for After Effects©
All the ArionFX neat physically-based optic effects are now available to your After Effects workflow.
ArionFX for After Effects is a versatile tool that offers a variety of key HDR image processing algorithms designed to function in floating-point 32-bit HDR data. Remarkably, ArionFX operates in Linear Workflow, not washing out your image, and respecting its full dynamic range at all times.
Whether you are a filmmaker or a CGI artist seeking for advanced HDR tonemapping, firefly removal, glare, bloom... ArionFX is a must in your toolchain.
Watch what ArionFX can do
Features overview
Bloom and Glare
Doing proper Bloom and Glare effects in post-processing is not an easy task. ArionFX simulates those effects physically, computing light diffraction based on the iris shape and the raw intensity of pixels in the image (with an optional HDR upcast pass).
Bloom is perfectly suited to simulate soft-focus lenses or the light overflow caused by a circular aperture.
Glare produces beautiful lens diffraction branches and fringing. It can even be mapped with obstacle and dirt maps to add even more realism or an original artistic look.
Chromatic aberration & vignetting
Old, cheap and very wide angle lenses often exhibit a vignetting effect, the brightness reduction at the periphery of the image due to the lens body blocking some light and chromatic aberration which is the result of incorrect focusing on the film of light entering the lens.
Although typically unwanted in photography, these effects are often used by CGI artists as they easily give an authentic photo-look to computer generated images.
In the real world, vignetting is often an inseprable companion of chromatic aberration.
It is, however, not very easy to achieve all these manually by shifting color channels or by masking the image radially.
ArionFX simulates these effects accurately in full high dynamic range.
Hotpixel and firefly removal
Our proprietary despeckler algorithm analyzes the image for pixels (or clusters of pixels) with a luminance that can be considered to be 'out of range' and which most likely frorm a firefly or an artifact.
Such hotspots are common residuals from unfinished renders made in Path Tracing renderers. They are often difficult to remove manually or automatically without damaging the image.
Because the ArionFX Despeckler works on the context surrounding each pixel, it is capable of removing fireflies without damaging legitimate features of the image. The tolerance of such behavior can be controlled with a cluster size and certain thresholds, to corner larger than 1px hotspots without sacrificing legitimate features such as specular highlights.
Aperture, obstacle an dirt maps
ArionFX supports custom aperture, obstacle and dirt maps.
Old, cheap and very wide angle lenses often exhibit a vignetting effect, which is a brightness reduction at the periphery of the image due to the lens body blocking some light.
And also chromatic aberration which is the result of incorrect focusing on the film of light entering the lens.
HDR upcast to accentuate lens effects
Sometimes the dynamic range of the input image is not enough to achive the amount of glare and bloom that you are after.
HDR upcast allows to set a threshold for luminance to pump up or dim out the contribution of certain pixels in lens effects.
The video above features an HDR upcast pass, applying a x25 factor on the brightest pixels to create a strong, stunning glare.
Color grading
Color grading can greatly enhance your images by modulating the color channels directly from the ArionFX User Interface in full 32-bit floating-point precision.
ArionFX color grading works on all channels at once, or selectively and non-destructively on shadows, midtones and highlights.
Colorspace
ArionFX allows you to select the colorspace embedded in the file as well as the colorspace to use for the final output independently.
Respecting the input and output colorspaces ensures that the output file seamlessly matches any pre or post-production workflow.
Tone-mapping
Many applications provide tone-mapping operators for high dynamic range images, but none like ArionFX.
Five different operators ensure that every possible high dynamic range situation is easily handled by ArionFX.
ArionFX provides several standard operators such as Reinhard 2002 and 2005 and their local variants, but also our in-house RandomControl '14 local operator, which we consider the most capable of all.
If you have a high dynamic range image, ArionFX can process it and reveal all the details hidden in under-exposed and over-exposed areas of your picture.
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Pre-processing
HDR Input colorspace.
HDR Output colorspace.
HDR Photo filter.
HDR upcast.
HDR low luminance cutoff.
HDR low luminance factor.
HDR high luminance cutoff.
HDR high luminance factor.
Custom aperture map.
Custom obstacle map.
Custom dirt map.
Iris aspect.
Iris decay.
Circular iris.
Polygonal iris (custom # of blades).
Iris blades curvature.
Iris angle.
Noise processing
HDR hotpixel/firefly removal.
HDR Hotpixel/firefly cluster size.
HDR Hotpixel/firefly luminance distance.
HDR Hotpixel/firefly chromatic distance.
HDR film grain.
Lens effects
HDR vignetting simulation.
HDR vignetting field of view.
HDR vignetting ratio.
HDR color fringe.
HDR lens bloom simulation.
HDR bloom downsampling.
HDR acyclic bloom mode.
HDR lens glare simulation.
HDR glare downsampling.
HDR acyclic glare mode.
HDR glare fringing simulation.
Tone-mapping
Over 50 camera and film response presets.
HDR ISO (exposure) correction.
HDR gamma correction.
Histogram normalization.
Histogram equalization.
Histogram white clip.
Histogram black clip.
Global: Reinhard 2002 tonemapping operator.
Local: Reinhard 2002 tonemapping operator.
Global: Reinhard 2005 tonemapping operator.
Local: Reinhard 2005 tonemapping operator.
Local: RandomControl 2014 tonemapping operator.
Color grading
Luminance-lockable color grading.
32-bit hue correction.
32-bit saturation correction.
32-bit lightness correction.
32-bit color balance.
32-bit shadows color balance.
32-bit midtones color balance.
32-bit highlights color balance.
Details enhancement
32-bit sharpening.
Filter output
Full filter toolchain output.
Clamped pixels preview/output.
Heat map preview/output.
Despeckler clusters preview/output.
Lens aperture preview/output.
Obstacle map preview/output.
Dirt map preview/output.
Upcast mask preview/output.
Iris settings preview/output.
Aperture x obstacle preview/output.
Diffraction pattern preview/output.
Bloom & glare overlay preview/output.
Miscellaneous
Up-to-date setup.
Library of aperture, obstacle and dirt maps.
Brand new user interface.
New documentation.
And more to come...
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Hardware requirements
ArionFX requires a 64-bit capable CPU, a 64-bit Operating System, and a 64-bit After Effects CS6 (minimum) installation.
A fast multiple-cores CPU and 8Gb of system RAM or better are strongly recommended.
ArionFX is strictly running on 64-bit Windows-based systems.
Supported Windows versions
32-bit 64-bit Windows XP* 
Windows Vista 
Windows 7 Windows 8 Windows 10
*Windows XP is no longer supporter by Microsoft. ArionFX may not run and no support is provided.
Supported After Effects versions
After Effects CS6..CC2019 After Effects version
32-bit versions of After Effects are not supported.
Supported file formats
File format All formats supported by After Effects itself. -
ArionFX for After Effects v3.5 documentation
An updated and extensive documentation for ArionFX for After Effects is now available from our support site.
Quicklinks
Things to know before you start