Effects and adjustment layers

Studio can run 13 Bitgrain effects, like dither, halftone and ASCII, on any image, plus eight image filters. Adjustment layers apply the same effects to everything beneath them. This page lists every effect and setting and explains how effects stack.

These are the same deterministic effects as the image editor: the same picture with the same settings always gives the same result.

Where effects live

Text, shapes, vectors and brush strokes do not have effects of their own. To put a halftone or dither over them, place an adjustment layer on top. See adjustment layers.

Per-layer Bitgrain effects

Pick an effect from the Bitgrain effects dropdown. The settings for that effect appear underneath, under Creative effects. Choose None to remove it. Each layer holds one Bitgrain effect at a time. Switching to a different effect starts it from its default settings.

The dropdown groups the effects into four families.

Halftone and screens

Dither turns tones into patterns of dots using one of 14 algorithms. Learn how each one looks in dithering. Halftone rebuilds the picture from printed dots, and CMYK splits it into four angled color screens. See halftone and print.

Ink and line

ASCII redraws the picture with text characters. See ASCII and text textures. Crosshatch draws it as pen hatching, and Pop art turns it into bold comic-book dots. See creative effects.

Color and tone

Posterize cuts the picture down to a few flat tones per channel. Misprint knocks the color channels out of register, like a cheap print run.

Print texture

Grain adds film grain. Photocopy gives the harsh, blown-out look of a copier. Fold adds crease lines as if the print had been folded. Dust & scratches scatters specks and scratch lines. Change the Seed to get a different, but still repeatable, pattern of dust.

Tip: Every setting is a scrub field. Drag across it for quick changes, or click it and type an exact value.

Preview and export resolution

On the canvas, image effects are rendered at a working size, 600 pixels on the long edge for image layers and up to 1000 pixels across the page for adjustment layers. Exports keep the look the same at any scale. Smooth effects, such as halftone, pop art, scanlines, crosshatch, misprint and the print textures, are rendered again at the export size with their cell and spacing values scaled up, so you get the same number of dots as on screen, only crisper. Grid and character effects (dither, ASCII and pixelate) are rendered at the canvas working size and then scaled up with hard pixel edges, so every pixel and character lands exactly where it was on screen.

Image filters

The Appearance section of image and adjustment layers has eight sliders. They work like the filters in other photo tools and are applied after the Bitgrain effect.

Click reset under the sliders to return all eight to neutral.

Adjustment layers

An adjustment layer is a movable, resizable box that applies an effect to everything underneath it, inside its bounds. The layers below are never changed, so you can grade a whole page, or just one region of it, and change your mind at any time.

Adding one

Click Add adjustment layer in the floating toolbar, or choose File then Adjustment layer. The new layer covers the whole page and starts with a halftone effect, so you can see it working straight away.

How it works

• It affects every visible layer below it on the same page, including the page background, text, shapes and other images.
• It only affects the area inside its box. Resize it or move it to limit the effect to part of the page.
• Layers above it are not affected. Drag it up or down the Layers panel to choose what it covers.
• The panel reminds you: "Applies its effect to everything below it, within this box."

Adjustment layer properties

Lower the opacity to mix the effected version with the original underneath. Blend modes work too: a halftone adjustment set to Multiply prints dots over the original colors.

How effects stack

Studio draws each page from the bottom layer up. For every image, it:

1. Runs the Bitgrain effect on the picture.
2. Applies the image filters on top of that.
3. Draws the result with the layer's opacity and blend mode, and adds any shadow or glow.

Each image holds only one Bitgrain effect, so to combine effects, use adjustment layers. Each adjustment layer takes the finished page beneath it, including the results of any adjustment layers lower down, and processes that. For example:

1. An image with Posterize at 4 levels.
2. Above it, an adjustment layer with Halftone in CMYK style.
3. Above that, an adjustment layer with Grain.

The halftone screens the posterized picture, and the grain sits over everything. Reorder the adjustment layers to change the order the effects run in.

Tip: Text above all your adjustment layers stays crisp and clean. Move a text layer below an adjustment layer when you want the text to be printed with the same halftone or dither as the image.

Animating effects

In Animate mode, effect settings can be keyframed, so a halftone cell can grow or a dither can fade in over time. The effect panel shows whether you are editing the base frame (changes apply to every frame) or keyframing a later frame. See animation and keyframes.

Related

• Effects overview
• Images and uploads
• Dithering
• Halftone and print
• Animation and keyframes
• Exporting from Studio

More documentation

• All documentation
• More in studio
• Open the editor
• Open the studio
• Read the blog