Image Control > Colorama effect

The Colorama effect assigns a custom palette to an element in a layer and then cycles the palette. First you colorize an image with a specified palette, and then you cycle the colors in that palette--that is, change them smoothly around the Output Cycle palette or color wheel. Color cycling is a quick way to animate pulsing colors that follow a gradient path, colors that zoom out of a radial gradient, and many other effects.


Original (left), with background cycling through colors (center), and with an inverted alpha mask (right)

Colorama works by first converting a specified property to grayscale and then remapping the grayscale values to the specified color palette. The current color palette appears on the Output Cycle color wheel.

The grayscale is then "wrapped around" the color wheel. Black pixels are mapped to the color at the top of the cycle, while increasingly lighter grays are mapped to successive colors going clockwise around the cycle, until this process wraps around to the start again at full white. For example, with the default "Hue cycle" palette, pixels corresponding to black become red, while pixels that have been converted to 50% gray become cyan. You can animate the cycle so that in one revolution, each pixel of the layer travels through the complete color cycle.

Related Subtopics:

Customizing a palette with the Colorama effect
Adjusting lightness or hue levels using the Colorama effect
Input Phase controls for the Colorama effect
Output Cycle controls for the Colorama effect
Modify controls for the Colorama effect
Pixel Selection, Masking, and other controls for the Colorama effect