Glow that behaves like light. Crisp, graphic bloom for titles, and a true lens glow for camera footage that takes its light from the source instead of painting it on.
Glow is not a blur. On a real lens it is light: a small share of everything that passes through the glass is scattered into a soft veil, most of it close to the source and a little of it far away. Bright lights show it; darker parts of the picture scatter just as much, you simply never see it.
Nx Radiance is built around that idea. It works in linear light, so a light twice as bright glows twice as much, and every size is measured against the frame, so a look built on a proxy holds when you switch to full resolution. In the Physical look the shape of the falloff follows the way lens glare really fades with distance, which is why the glow looks attached to its source rather than floating on top of it.
There are two ways to use that engine, chosen with the Look popup at the top of the panel:
Graphic
The default. The glow is added on top of the image and bright areas bloom to white. This is the familiar motion-graphics glow for titles, logos, neon and UI work, and it composites cleanly over any background.
Physical
A lens model. The glow’s light is taken from its source, so the frame keeps its total brightness and a light never gets brighter by glowing. Made for camera footage, log and linear sources, and HDR.
Around the glow sit the rest of a lens: anamorphic streaks and aperture starbursts, lens glare that draws true diffraction spikes and rings (or uses any image as the shape of the glare), lens dirt lit by the light that reaches it, and a set of tone curves for the highlights.
The Panel at a Glance
The controls are grouped in the order you will usually reach for them. Look, Glow and Glow Source carry most of the work; the groups below them add lens character when a shot asks for it.
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Every control is described individually in the Control Reference chapter at the back. Controls that do nothing with the current settings are greyed out in hosts that support it.
Quick Start
A Glow in a Minute
Apply Nx Radiance and you already have a glow: the defaults are the Graphic look at a moderate strength. From there:
1Choose the Look. Graphic for titles and graphics, Physical for camera footage. The two respond differently to the same sliders, so pick this first.
2Tell it what the clip is. Set Input Encoding to how the clip is really encoded: Rec.709 / Gamma 2.4 on a graded Rec.709 timeline (the default), or the camera log if the effect sits before your conversion. Final Cut Pro and Motion handle this for you.
3Shape the glow with three sliders. See below.
4Add character if the shot wants it: streaks, diffraction glare, lens dirt, a tint.
The three controls that matter
Glow Amount
How much glow. In the Graphic look it is the strength; in the Physical look it is the share of the light the lens scatters, from 0 to 1.
Glow Radius
How far the glow reaches, in pixels of a 1080p frame. Small values give a tight halo, large ones a wide veil across the frame.
Glow Exposure
Extra gain on the glow in stops. One stop doubles it. The quickest way to make a glow read without changing its shape.
Sizes are resolution-proof
Every size in the panel is measured in pixels of a 1080p frame and scales with the render resolution. A glow set up on a proxy or a half-resolution preview is the same glow at UHD.
The Looks
Two Looks: Graphic and Physical
Graphic
The Graphic look adds the glow on top of the picture. Its near and far parts combine the way layers do in Screen mode, so a large bright area settles just below white while small sources keep their colour, and the brightest cores bloom out to white. It is the look titles, logos, neon and interface graphics are usually finished with, and it is the default.
A plain title (left) and the same title with Nx Radiance at its defaults (right).
Two controls belong to this look only: Glow Blend (Screen for the settled look, Add for a hotter, denser glow) and the way the Auto tone curve rolls bright glow to white.
Physical
The Physical look treats the glow as scattered light. With Conserve Energy on, every pixel gives up exactly the light it sends into the glow, so a street lamp gains a halo and loses a little of its own brightness, and the frame as a whole keeps its exposure. Nothing gets brighter by glowing, which is why the result sits in the image the way real lens glare does. A uniform frame comes back unchanged all the way to its corners.
A linear test plate (left) and the Physical look at Glow Amount 0.25 (right). The bright lights glow; the dim lights and the grey steps barely change.
SDR footage and clipped whites
The Physical look can only redistribute the light that is in the picture. On a display-referred clip a clipped street lamp holds a value of 1.0, no more than a white wall, so it scatters no more than the wall does and the glow stays modest. Give the lights back their intensity with Highlight Boost (Glow Source group), which raises clipped highlights before they scatter, or simply raise Glow Exposure.
The test plate recorded as clipped SDR: Physical look with no boost (left) and Highlight Boost 4 (right).
Where Physical is at its best
On log and linear sources, and on HDR, the lights in the picture still carry their real intensity: a headlight may be a hundred times brighter than a white shirt. There the Physical look needs no help. Apply it before your conversion to the display, set Input Encoding to the camera log or linear space, and let the grade that follows handle the highlights.
Input
Input Encoding
Glow is light, so Nx Radiance does its work in linear light. Input Encoding tells it how to get there: pick the encoding the clip really has at the point where the effect sits, and it is decoded on the way in and encoded back on the way out, so the rest of your pipeline sees the same encoding it handed over.
Display
Rec.709 / Gamma 2.4 (the default), sRGB, Rec.709 / Gamma 2.2 and 2.6, P3-D65, P3-DCI, Rec.2020. Use these on a graded or display-referred timeline, and for titles and graphics.
Linear
Linear Rec.709, Linear ACEScg, Linear DaVinci Wide Gamut. For linear After Effects projects, ACES and scene-linear compositing.
Camera log
ACEScct, Apple Log and Apple Log 2, ARRI LogC3 and LogC4, Canon C-Log 2, Cineon, DaVinci Intermediate, DJI D-Log, Fuji F-Log2, Panasonic V-Log, RED Log3G10, Samsung Log, Sony S-Log3. Use these when the effect sits before the conversion to the display.
Log and linear encodings are scene-referred, so the Physical look gets no tone curve by default: the grade that follows is where the highlights are shaped. On display encodings the Auto tone curve keeps the glow inside the display range.
Final Cut Pro and Motion hand the effect a known encoding, so the control is not shown there.
Requirements & Hosts
Where It Runs
Nx Radiance runs on macOS and Windows, GPU-accelerated through Metal, CUDA or OpenCL, with a multithreaded CPU path where no GPU is available. It installs as a native effect in:
DaVinci ResolveOPENFX · WIN · MAC
Adobe Premiere Pro & After EffectsWIN · MAC
Final Cut Pro & MotionMAC · FXPLUG
macOS
macOS 11 or later, Apple silicon or Intel. Final Cut Pro and Motion need macOS 13 or later.
Windows
64-bit Windows.
In every host the effect is called Nx Radiance and lives in the Nx Color group. The same controls sit in the same groups everywhere; only the surrounding interface changes.
Installing
Installing Nx Radiance
Quit DaVinci Resolve, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Final Cut Pro and Motion first: plug-ins load when a host starts.
macOS
1Open the Nx Radiance installer package and follow the steps.
2On the Installation Type page, choose Customize if you want to leave a host out. The components are OpenFX (DaVinci Resolve), Adobe (Premiere Pro / After Effects) and Final Cut Pro / Motion. The Final Cut Pro component is available on macOS 13 and later.
3Enter your administrator password when asked, then start your host.
The Final Cut Pro effect is set up for the account you install from. Other user accounts on the same Mac get it the next time they log in.
Windows
1Run the Nx Radiance setup program and accept the Windows prompt for administrator rights.
2Choose the hosts to install: OpenFX (DaVinci Resolve and other OpenFX hosts) and Adobe (Premiere Pro and After Effects). Hosts the installer cannot find on the machine start unticked.
3Finish, then start your host.
Finding the effect
DaVinci Resolve
In the Effects library, find Nx Radiance under OpenFX › Nx Color and drag it onto a clip on the Edit page, onto a node on the Color page, or into a node tree on the Fusion page.
Premiere Pro
In the Effects panel, open Video Effects › Nx Color › Nx Radiance and drag it onto a clip.
After Effects
With a layer selected, choose Effect › Nx Color › Nx Radiance.
Final Cut Pro
In the Effects browser, find Nx Radiance in the Nx Color category and drag it onto a clip.
Motion
In the Library, choose Filters › Nx Color › Nx Radiance and apply it to a layer.
Before activation
Until the machine is activated, Nx Radiance runs in demo mode: every feature works so you can judge it on your own footage, and the output carries a DEMO watermark. The next section removes it.
Licensing & Activation
Your License
At a glance
One purchase = one license key, emailed right after checkout.
A license covers 2 machines (2 seats). Activate on each machine once.
One activation licenses every supported app on that machine: Resolve, Premiere Pro, After Effects and, on macOS, Final Cut Pro and Motion.
Works offline. After a one-time online activation, Nx Radiance keeps running without an internet connection and checks in quietly on its own whenever you’re connected.
Activating
1Buy Nx Radiance. Your license key arrives by email within a few minutes (check spam if you don’t see it).
2Install the plug-in, open any supported host and add Nx Radiance to a clip.
3Scroll to the License group at the bottom of the panel and press License…. Paste your key and click Activate. The watermark disappears everywhere on that machine; in Resolve the Status line reads Activated.
In Final Cut Pro and Motion
The License… button opens the Nx Radiance license window as a separate small app, because Final Cut Pro does not let an effect show a window of its own. Activate there; the effect picks up the license on its next frame.
Moving machines
The same License… button manages an activated seat: deactivate there to free it for a new machine. Ordinary upgrades (RAM, GPU, drives) don’t use up a seat. Lost your key? It’s in your order email, or sign in at nxcolor.com under My Account. Anything else: email [email protected].
Building the Glow
Glow
The Glow group sets how much light goes into the glow and how it spreads.
Glow Amount
Graphic: the strength of the glow. Physical: the share of the light the lens scatters, 0 to 1. The default 0.15 is a clearly visible glow.
Glow Radius
How far the glow reaches, in 1080p pixels. In the Graphic look the glow close to a source stays about the same as you raise it: Glow Radius adds reach. In the Physical look the same light is spread further, so a larger radius gives a wider, fainter veil.
Glow Falloff
How fast the glow fades with distance. 2 is inverse square, the way lens scatter behaves. Higher keeps the glow tight to its source; lower spreads a wide, even veil.
Glow Core Size
The size of the bright core around each source before the fade begins.
Glow Exposure
A gain on the glow in stops. In the Physical look, 0 keeps the physical amount; raise it for a stylised glow that is stronger than a lens would give.
Glow Blend
Graphic look only. Screen lets wide bright areas settle just below white. Add sums the glow’s near and far parts for a hotter, denser glow.
Conserve Energy
Physical look only. On: the glow’s light is taken from its source. Off: the glow is added on top, like a classic bloom, but with the lens-shaped falloff.
Building the Glow
Glow Source
The glow source is the light that feeds the glow. By default every pixel emits, exactly as in a lens, and only the bright parts show a visible glow because only they are bright enough to be seen. The Glow Source group lets you narrow that down.
Use Threshold
Only light above the threshold feeds the glow. Useful in the Graphic look on busy footage, where you want the lights to glow and the sky not to.
Threshold
Where the glow starts, in stops relative to diffuse white. 0 is a value of 1.0; −1 is half of that, +1 twice.
Threshold Softness
The width of the transition around the threshold, in stops. A wide softness avoids a visible edge where the glow switches on.
Threshold Mode
Luminance keeps each light’s colour. Per Channel thresholds red, green and blue separately, so saturated lights glow earlier.
Highlight Boost
Raises clipped highlights before they scatter, in stops. The key to a convincing Physical glow on SDR footage, where lamps and windows all clip at the same value.
Source Color Bias
Favours saturated light (positive) or neutral light (negative) in the glow. With a threshold, it shifts what the threshold judges from brightness toward colour.
To see exactly what is feeding the glow, switch Render View to Glow Source while you set the threshold.
Building the Glow
Colour & Tint
Glow Saturation sets how colourful the glow itself is.
In the RGB Split group, Split Distance moves two colour channels of the picture apart (with Split Angle and Split Channels choosing the direction and the pair), so the fringe appears on the image and on its glow.
Tint
Tint Mode Core to Halo at its default colours: warm near the letters, deeper orange at the edge of the glow.
Color
One colour over the whole glow.
Core to Halo
Core Color near the source, shading into Halo Color far from it.
By Intensity
Bright glow takes the core colour, faint glow the halo colour.
Tint Blend decides how the colour meets the glow. Multiply filters it like a coloured gel, so light the colour lacks is removed: a red tint removes a green light’s glow. Recolor gives the glow the tint colour at its own brightness, so a green light glows red. Overlay and Soft Light blend the tint in the way a paint program does. Tint Amount fades the whole tint in and out.
Building the Glow
Glow Shape
Glow Aspect Ratio stretches the glow: above 1 it grows wider along the Glow Aspect Angle, below 1 narrower. A ratio around 2 with an angle of 0 gives the horizontal, oval glow of an anamorphic lens. The stretch is smooth, with no hard edge across the short axis, and a moving light keeps its brightness at any angle.
Real glow is slightly warm at its edge, because red light scatters further than blue. Glow Chromatic Spread reproduces that: at 1, red reaches about 11% further and blue about 15% less far. For stylised fringes, Red, Green and Blue Radius Scale scale each channel’s reach directly.
Lens Character
Streaks
Streaks send a share of the light along lines through each source. Anamorphic draws one line, the horizontal flare of an anamorphic lens. Starburst draws the spikes an aperture’s blades produce: an even number of blades gives that many spikes, an odd number twice as many, as a real iris does.
Anamorphic streaks with a cool Streak Color (left); a six-bladed Starburst (right).
Streak Amount
The share of the light that goes into the streaks. In the Physical look it is taken from the source like the glow.
Streak Length
Length in 1080p pixels; Streak Falloff sets how fast they fade along it.
Streak Angle
Rotation of the streaks.
Streak Chromatic Spread
Red streaks run longer than blue ones, as with real diffraction.
Streak Color
Colour of the streaks. Anamorphic flares are often a cool blue.
Lens Character
Lens Glare
Lens glare is a second glow with a shape of its own. Glare Amount sets the share of the light that goes through it; at 0 it is off. It has three sources:
Diffraction
The starburst, rings and rainbow fringes a bladed aperture really produces, computed from its shape. Diffraction Blades, Blade Roundness (0 straight blades and crisp spikes, 1 a round aperture with rings) and Glare Rotation describe the aperture.
Shape Image
Your image becomes the shape of the glare: a bokeh shape, a flare, any picture. Bright on black works best.
Aperture Image
Your image is the aperture, white where light passes, and the diffraction it would produce becomes the glare.
Diffraction with seven blades, Glare Amount 0.45, Outer Detail Boost 0.45: fourteen spikes with spectral fringes.
Glare Radius is the radius of the glare. Glare Spectral Spread draws each wavelength at its own size, which is where the rainbow edges come from; 0 gives one neutral pattern. Outer Detail Boost lifts the faint spikes and rings against the core: 0 is the physical pattern, which on everyday footage is subtle, so raise it when your lights are not bright enough for the spikes to show. Glare Quality High is sharper on UHD and larger frames and takes about four times the work.
An iris-shaped glow
For the stacked, iris-shaped glow popular in motion graphics: Glow Amount 0, Glare Amount 1, Glare Source Shape Image, an iris shape (a white hexagon or star on black) as the shape image, Shape Copies around 10, Copy Spacing 90 and Glare Spectral Spread 0. Shape Copies draws nested versions of the shape from small up to Glare Radius; positive spacing keeps most of them small for a bright core with a few wide rings. Raise Glow Amount again to mix in the smooth glow.
Connecting an image
In DaVinci Resolve, connect the image to the effect’s Lens Glare Image input. In Premiere Pro and After Effects, choose it as the Glare Image Layer. Final Cut Pro and Motion offer the Diffraction source only.
Lens Character
Lens Dirt
Dust and smudges on the front element only show where light reaches them. Nx Radiance lights the dirt with the light arriving at the lens (in the Graphic look, with the glow itself), so it appears around the bright sources and stays invisible in the dark parts of the frame, as it does on a real lens.
Procedural dirt at Dirt Amount 2.5: the smudges appear only around the lights.
Dirt Amount
Brightness of the dirt. 0 turns it off.
Dirt Source
Procedural dirt, shaped by Dirt Scale and Dirt Seed, or Image: your own dirt image, bright where the dirt is. In Resolve connect it to the Lens Dirt Image input; in Premiere Pro and After Effects choose it as the Dirt Image Layer.
Dirt Spread
How far from each light the dirt lights up.
Dirt Color Inheritance
0: the dirt glows neutral. 1: it takes the colour of the light that reaches it.
Dirt Contrast
Contrast of the dirt pattern.
Finishing
Tone Mapping
A strong glow can push highlights past what a display can show. The Tone Mapping group decides what happens there.
Auto
The right choice for most work. Graphic look: bright glow rolls smoothly to white. Physical look: Soft Clip on display encodings, and nothing on log and linear, where your grade shapes the highlights.
Soft Clip
Leaves the picture alone and rolls only the glow into the headroom the highlights leave.
Film
A filmic shoulder with a path to white. Highlight Headroom sets how many stops above diffuse white reach display white.
The familiar per-channel curves, for matching an existing pipeline or look.
Chroma Clamp
Keeps the brightness and pulls strong colour in as it grows, so saturated lights do not go neon.
Tone Mapping Target chooses whether the curve shapes the whole result or only the glow on top of the untouched picture (Auto: the glow in the Graphic look, the whole image in the Physical look). Tone Mapping Mix blends back toward the untoned result.
Finishing
Output, Alpha & Titles
Composite
The picture with its glow. The default.
Glow Only
The glow over black, for an Add or Screen blend in the host, or for grading the glow on its own.
Glow + Alpha
The glow with a matching alpha, ready to composite over anything.
Source Opacity sets how much of the original picture stays under the glow in Composite output. 0 leaves the glow alone over black.
Titles, logos and shapes on transparent layers are handled with care: soft edges keep their light, and no colour leaks out of the transparent parts of the layer. The Alpha Handling popup decides what happens at the layer’s edge:
A title on a transparent layer over a background: Extend with Glow (left, the default) and Preserve (right).
Extend with Glow
The default. The glow spills past the letters and the layer’s alpha grows to carry it, so the title glows over whatever is underneath.
Preserve
Keeps the clip’s alpha exactly. The glow only shows inside the existing shape; use it when something downstream relies on the original matte.
Finishing
Views
The Render View popup at the top of the panel shows what the glow is built from. Leave it on Final to render.
Lens Response (PSF)
Lens Response (PSF) shows how the lens would draw a single point of light with the current settings, on a log scale, so the faint tail is visible too. It is the quickest way to see what Glow Radius, Glow Falloff, streaks and the lens glare do together.
Glow Source
The light that feeds the glow, after the threshold.
Inspect Glow
The scattered light before tone mapping.
Lens Dirt
The dirt layer on its own.
Reference
Host Notes
DaVinci Resolve
On the Color page Nx Radiance behaves like any node; place it before your output conversion when you use the Physical look on log footage. The Lens Dirt Image and Lens Glare Image inputs take the dirt and glare images. On the Fusion page, a comp built from a timeline clip renders at the clip’s source resolution: a UHD clip on a 1080p timeline renders at UHD. Add a Resize before the node, or work on proxies, when the timeline is smaller than the media.
Premiere Pro
GPU-accelerated through the Mercury Playback Engine. When a Dirt Image Layer or Glare Image Layer is in use, Premiere renders that frame in software, which is slower.
After Effects
GPU-accelerated. The glow can reach past the layer’s own bounds, so a small title layer still glows freely. With the project set to Software Only the effect renders on the CPU, which is slower, particularly with many Shape Copies.
Final Cut Pro & Motion
The effect appears in Final Cut Pro through its Nx Color effect template, which the installer sets up. Input Encoding is handled automatically. Lens dirt is procedural and lens glare is Diffraction only, since Final Cut Pro has no image inputs for effects. License… opens the Nx Radiance license window.
Control Reference
Every Parameter
Groups are listed in panel order. Sizes are in pixels of a 1080p frame and scale with the render resolution. Ranges are the limits you can type; sliders may cover a narrower span.
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Tips & Troubleshooting
Getting the Most From It
The Physical glow looks weak on my footage. On SDR footage every light is clipped at the same value, so there is little extra light to scatter. Raise Highlight Boost to give the lights back their intensity, or raise Glow Exposure. On log or linear sources, check Input Encoding: a log clip read as Rec.709 has no bright highlights at all.
The whole picture softens or lifts. In the Physical look every pixel scatters, which is what a real lens does. For a glow on the lights only, turn on Use Threshold, or lower Glow Amount and raise Glow Exposure.
Colours look over-saturated or washed out. Input Encoding does not match the clip. Pick the encoding the clip has at the point where the effect sits in your pipeline.
No spikes from the diffraction glare. The physical pattern is faint next to its core. Raise Outer Detail Boost, use brighter sources (Highlight Boost), or lower Blade Roundness toward 0.
The glow stops at a title’s edge. Set Alpha Handling to Extend with Glow.
A glowing element composites with a dark fringe. Use Glow + Alpha output, or Extend with Glow, rather than cutting the glow out with a matte afterwards.
Nx Radiance does not appear in Final Cut Pro. Quit and reopen Final Cut Pro once after installing. On another user account on the same Mac, log out and back in.
“Activate” does nothing? Make sure the machine can reach nxcolor.com once. Corporate firewalls or VPNs sometimes block it; try another network for the one-time activation.
