VID · Video tools

Film Halation Video Effect

Shareable link

Settings are written to the URL as you change them. Nothing differs from the defaults yet.

Add the red fringe that bright lights and edges get on motion-picture film. Lamps, windows, reflections, and backlit hair pick up a warm halo, the look CineStill made familiar on stills and that digital cinematographers add in the grade.

Threshold and spread

Highlight Threshold picks which pixels are bright enough to halate. Halo Spread sets how far the red light travels, as a percentage of the frame. Small spreads give a tight rim; large spreads a wide warm glow.

Amount and color

Halation Amount sets the strength of the effect. Red-Orange Bias moves the halo between deep red and orange. The halo follows every moving light, so night footage with practicals and car lights benefits most.

Frequently Asked Questions

Light that passes through the film emulsion, reflects off the back of the film, and exposes the red-sensitive layer again on the way back. It shows as a red-orange glow around bright edges and lights.

A glow adds neutral light over the highlights. Halation subtracts the original highlight from the spread, so the color lands around the bright edge rather than on it, and it is red-orange rather than white.

Yes. Spread is a percentage of the frame, so the preview and every export show the same halo width.

It is copied into the export unchanged when the container can hold its codec, and re-encoded when it cannot. A note under the export button says which happened.

Explore Our Tools

Browse all tools