Each one is just a drag and drop away from your video. Looking through the list, there are effects for old-time movies, music videos, spy films, sci-fi projects and more. The new Beauty filter greatly simplifies the process of enhancing and blurring skin tones with just a few clicks. Additionally, a good amount of the effects are unique or complicated and would require a programming degree to duplicate. While an advanced user might be able to duplicate some of the filters, the time and effort spent doing so is not nearly as cost-effective as the Sapphire 7 plug-ins. You can find bleach bypass, film damage, laser beams and even some that require long and hard thought for a circumstance you would use them in, such as the DogVision effect. The variety of effects is also quite impressive. Overall, the level of customization is enormous. There’s also a reset button to bring the default settings back in case the fun gets out of hand.

Most have intuitive labels a few require some creative messing around. The average effect has a dozen or more controls to spin, slide and tweak. If there’s a learning curve, it starts with the adjustments you can make to each one.

Just drag and drop them onto a layer and you’re in business. Upon opening After Effects, there are nearly 250 visual effects and transitions distributed among nine new category folders in the “Effects & Presets” pane. Mixing to Taste Screengrab of GenArts Sapphire 7 interface Again, check the compatibility notes on the website for more detail. It’s also capable of running on Linux, Mac and Windows, operating systems.

Sapphire is compatible with a number of host platforms such as Adobe After Effects, Apple Final Cut Pro, Autodesk Smoke, Avid Media Composer, The Foundry Nuke, Sony Vegas Pro and open source platforms. Results tend to vary by system so it’s a good idea for prospective buyers to check the GenArts website and make sure their system meets the requirements. During the review process, the full version of Sapphire 7 ran without any hiccups inside Adobe After Effects CS4, on a Windows 7 laptop with an Intel Core i7-2820QM 2.3GHz CPU, 8GB of RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M video card.

Genarts sapphire ofx v7.07