Separating RGB channels

Posted on 18. Feb, 2009 by Jerzy Drozda Jr in Blog

We’ve all been through this. Creating channel separation effect by hand is a pain. You have to duplicate the layers and use channel mixer and blend modes to get what you want. Not anymore. Now with new After Effects CS4 we can script a simple Pixel Bender to do just that.

Finally I got my hands on this amazing new tool from Adobe called Pixel Bender Toolkit. It allows you to script very powerful effects in a very simple way. What’s best is that scripts you create may be used as plugins and shaders in Photoshop, Flash, and After Effects.

Unfortunatelly I haven’t found a nice way to create user friendly interfaces for After Effects users. All Pixel Bender allows you to create as a parameter is a slider. But hey – I’m just starting. And besides – it’s still the first official release. I think there are many great things to come from Pixel Bender technology in the near future.

After writing your code and adding parameters you can simply put the PBK file into your plugins folder in After Effects CS4 and open the application. Your newly created shader will be available under the PixelBender group in the Effects & Presets pallette.

I’m currently working on a CustomEffect as a wrapper for the Pixel Bender code for your convinience. Here is the preview of the interface that I’m working on. I hope you’ll find this useful.

In the meanwhile grab the Pixel Bender plugin that will help you with simple RGB channel separation.

Download: Maltaannon's RGB Splitter PBK (After Effects CS4)

Happy AfterEffecting.

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39 Responses to “Separating RGB channels”

  1. Rafael Guerra

    18. Feb, 2009

    you´re awesome. Very useful stuff.

    Reply to this comment

  2. Peter

    18. Feb, 2009

    Yep, PixelBender rocks! The first thing I did when it came out was to replicate the color suppression feature from flame/toxik/combustion’s color corrector, and it didn’t even take me ten minutes from start to finish. Completing just the application form for the PS SDK takes longer than that.

    But those UI shortcomings are even worse in Photoshop than they are in AE. I really hope Adobe is going to improve that area as quickly as possible, right now it is impossible to make complex filters even remotely intuitive for end users. And you actually have to have two copies of the same pixel bender filter in two different folders if you want to use it in both After Effects AND Photoshop, the AE one being in the user’s home directory (at least on OS X), which sucks.

    Reply to this comment

  3. Maltaannon

    19. Feb, 2009

    Yeah. Simple conditions would do. Not to mention being able to compile the damn thing to a AEX file.

    Reply to this comment

  4. Around the Web After Effects Tutorial Roundup - AETUTS

    06. Mar, 2009

    [...] a Pixel Bender plugin to facilitate Separating RGB channels which is essentially the same thing. Read More Finally AE Portal News let us know that Forging Fire posted an After Effects CS3 Split RGB Channels [...]

    Reply to this comment

  5. Feed Reader (Beta) » Around the Web After Effects Tutorial Roundup

    08. Mar, 2009

    [...] Meanwhile Maltaannon is preparing to release a Pixel Bender plugin to facilitate Separating RGB channels which is essentially the same thing. Read More [...]

    Reply to this comment

  6. Around the Web After Effects Tutorial Roundup | Feed Reader (Beta)

    09. Mar, 2009

    [...] Meanwhile Maltaannon is preparing to release a Pixel Bender plugin to facilitate Separating RGB channels which is essentially the same thing. Read More [...]

    Reply to this comment

  7. mattrunks

    10. Mar, 2009

    It would be awesome ! Your interface looks cool, good luck from france :)

    Reply to this comment

  8. ChromAbberation | Alias 3d Media

    30. Jul, 2009

    [...] in February 2009 I wrote a blog post about Separating RGB Channels. I thought that it would be a great example of what Adobe Pixel Bender technology can to – it’s [...]

    Reply to this comment

  9. vuk

    06. Aug, 2009

    thank you,Jerzy. nice script. I want to use this for my rendering microscopic view as post production. In microscopic world,light distort to these chanels. This will be usefull for that!?

    Reply to this comment

  10. Леонтий

    18. Oct, 2009

    Довольно интересно. Некоторые моменты не знал.

    Reply to this comment

  11. revoluzer

    23. Jun, 2010

    THX. Pretty cool Stuff, I need it. It works in CS5 too.

    Reply to this comment

  12. Ryan

    03. Aug, 2010

    did you ever get your interface done? im needing to use this for video now images does that work to?

    Reply to this comment

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    29. Sep, 2010

    Awesome and so usefull! Your da man thks

    Reply to this comment

  14. pafloy

    17. Feb, 2011

    how do i install it?

    Reply to this comment

  15. Around the Web After Effects Tutorial Roundup | Tut Free

    01. Jul, 2011

    [...] Meanwhile Maltaannon is preparing to release a Pixel Bender plugin to facilitate Separating RGB channels which is essentially the same thing. Read More [...]

    Reply to this comment

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    29. Aug, 2011

    Thank you so much !! It’s very useful.

    Reply to this comment

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