Effects · Alekhya

Reference

Panel: Effect Controls
Menu: Layer ▸ Show Effect Controls

An effect is a non-destructive image operation applied to a layer's rendered result. Effects are held in an ordered stack, edited in the Effect Controls panel, and evaluated on the GPU every frame. Nothing is baked: removing an effect restores the layer exactly.

There are 36 effects in six families. Every effect parameter is a slider or a colour well, and every slider is a timeline channel.

The families

The Add effect menu groups effects into six submenus, in this order.

Family	Effects	Page
Color	17	Color
Stylize	11	Stylize
Blur	3	Blur
Distort	3	Distort
Keying	1	Keying
Transitions	1	Transitions
Total	36

What carries an effect stack

Three kinds of target hold their own independent stack:

Main layers — the stack runs on the layer's composited result (its own strokes, its sub-layer stack, and its mask) before the layer composites into the scene.
Groups — the stack runs on the group's composited result, after every member has composited into it, and before the group composites into the scene.
Sub-layers — the stack runs on the sub-layer's content before it composites into its parent layer.

A mask has no effect stack. Its Effects button is disabled.

An adjustment layer applies its stack to the scene composited below it rather than to content of its own. An adjustment layer with an empty stack has no effect at all.

Thumbnails agree with the canvas

The Layers panel thumbnail is captured after the layer's effect stack has run, so a thumbnail never disagrees with what the layer actually renders.

Opening the panel

Select a layer, group, or sub-layer in the Layers panel and tap the Effects button (the filters icon) in the action row along the bottom. The button is disabled when the resolved target is a mask. Tapping it again closes the panel. Layer ▸ Show Effect Controls reveals the panel in the current workspace.

Creating an adjustment layer opens Effect Controls automatically.

The panel header reads Effects · <name>, resolving the name of the group, sub-layer, or layer being edited. When no target is being edited the panel reads Select a layer to edit effects; when the target has no effects yet it reads No effects yet — add one above.

The canvas is read-only while effects are open

While Effect Controls is open the panel states Canvas is read-only while effects are open. Drawing and every other tool are disabled until the panel is closed. Camera navigation is unaffected — you can still orbit, pan, and zoom to inspect the result.

Panels that do not apply to the current state are greyed out rather than hidden, so the layout does not reflow while you work.

Adding, removing, and reordering

Open the Add effect menu, choose a family submenu, and choose an effect by name. The new effect is inserted at the top of the stack and is created with every parameter at its default value.

Each effect occupies a card in the panel. The card carries, from left to right: an enable toggle, the effect's name, an up chevron and a down chevron that swap the card with its neighbour, and a delete button. Below that sits the effect's own body — a slider per parameter and a colour well per colour, or a dedicated editor for Curves, Gradient Map, and Transition.

Disabling an effect greys out every control in its body and skips the effect entirely at render time. The effect keeps its values and can be re-enabled at any point.

Stack order

Effects are applied top card first, working down the panel. Because a newly added effect is inserted at the top, it is applied before everything already in the stack. Reorder with the chevrons when the sequence matters — a blur followed by a threshold does not produce the result of a threshold followed by a blur.

Three effects skip their own pass when they would do nothing: Curves at an identity curve, Gradient Map with no gradient, and Gaussian Blur at Radius 0.

Keyframing effects

Every effect parameter is a channel on the timeline. When a target's stack is non-empty its outline gains an Effects section containing one row per effect, named for that effect, and inside it:

an Enabled row — a step channel that snaps the effect on or off at a keyframe rather than interpolating across it;
one row per parameter, named with the parameter's on-screen label and scaled to that parameter's own range.

Keys are set and retimed exactly as for any other channel. See Keyframes and the Graph editor.

Two effects have no keyframable parameters: Curves and Gradient Map are edited with a graph and a gradient bar rather than sliders, and their curve and stop data are not animatable.

Effects on layers and sub-layers are keyframable from the timeline. Effects on a group are not — the timeline outline emits no Effects section for a group row. The single exception is the Transition effect, whose Animate this transition button lays its progress keys directly and works when the target is a group.