Deep Glow 2 for After Effects
Version 1.1.1 · Plugin Everything · Windows 10 / 11 (64-bit) · ranked #93 in the library
A glow plugin that behaves like light actually behaves, spreading through a composition in linear colour with a falloff you can shape, instead of the flat white halo the built in effect has produced for twenty years.
Read the installation section below before you start. The order of the steps matters on this release.
About this release
Overview
The glow that ships with After Effects has one real problem: it works on whatever colour values it finds and produces a uniform bloom that looks pasted on. Deep Glow converts to linear space first, does the spread there, and converts back, which is how light behaves in a camera. Bright areas bleed further than dim ones, colours carry into the halo instead of washing to white, and the result sits inside the image rather than floating above it.
The controls are short by design. Radius, exposure, threshold and a colour falloff gradient cover most of the work, and everything else is a refinement of those four. The falloff gradient is the part people keep going back to, because it lets a glow shift hue as it spreads, warm at the core and cooling out toward the edge, which is what gives a title or a practical light in a plate a look that reads as photographed rather than generated.
Version 2 rewrote the render path for the GPU, so a heavy glow across a full frame comp previews at a rate that lets you actually judge it while dragging a slider. Multiple glow layers now composite in a single pass, the compositing modes match what the rest of the timeline expects, and a set of presets covers the common cases so a motion designer under a deadline gets something usable before touching a parameter.
What it does
Feature breakdown
Linear colour space processing
The spread is computed in linear light regardless of the project working space, so bright regions bloom further than dim ones the way an actual lens behaves.
Colour falloff gradient
Drive the hue of the glow across its radius with a gradient, producing a warm core cooling toward the outer edge instead of one flat tint.
GPU accelerated render
The whole chain runs on the graphics card, which keeps full frame previews interactive on 4K compositions with several instances stacked.
Threshold and exposure control
Decide exactly which values contribute to the glow and how hard they push, which is what stops midtones from getting hazy.
Composite modes and matte options
Render the glow only, composite it over the source, or output it as a separate pass for grading downstream in the same comp.
Preset library
A stocked set of starting points covering neon, screen light, practical bulbs, energy effects and subtle atmospheric bloom.
Changed in this build
Version 1.1.1
- Full GPU render path replacing the previous partly threaded CPU implementation.
- Multiple stacked instances now composite in a single pass rather than each one triggering a separate buffer.
- New falloff gradient editor with savable presets shared across projects.
- Fixed banding visible on very wide radius glows in 8 bit projects.
- Reduced memory footprint during multi-frame rendering on long comps.
Installation
Follow these in order
- Close After Effects completely before you start, a running host locks the plugin folder.
- Extract the archive to a local folder.
- Disable real time protection while the licence component runs.
- Run the installer as administrator and let it locate your After Effects installation.
- Run the included activation step after the files are copied, not before.
- Open After Effects, check the effect appears under the stylize category, then restore protection.
Release notes
From whoever packed it
- If the effect shows as missing on an existing project, the plugin landed in the wrong version folder. Copy it across manually.
- Block the plugin manager update check. An update replaces the licensed binary.
- The GPU path falls back to CPU automatically on unsupported cards, which is slower but produces identical output.
System requirements
Minimum and recommended
| Operating system | Windows 10 version 22H2 or Windows 11, 64-bit |
|---|---|
| Host application | After Effects 2021 or newer, 64-bit only |
| Processor | Any modern multicore Intel or AMD processor |
| Memory | 8 GB minimum, matching whatever After Effects itself needs for your project |
| Graphics | GPU with 2 GB VRAM and current drivers for the accelerated path |
Questions about this release
Answered before you ask
- Does it work in Premiere Pro?
- No. This is an After Effects effect and does not install into the Premiere effect list.
- Will it render on a farm node?
- Yes, as long as the plugin and its licence component are installed on each node.
- Does it support 32 bit float projects?
- Yes, and that is where it looks best, since the linear pipeline has the headroom it needs.
Download
Pick a mirror