Joe’s Maximizer expands image pixels to create anything from a irregular mosaic to a kaleidoscope of geometric shapes. The shape-expansion can be set to lighten or darken and grows to cover the opposite pixels. Iterations can be spaced out to create kaleidoscopic and prismatic effects.
Rendering speed is directly proportional to the complexity of the resulting effect. Increasing the amount and number of sides requires more calculations and longer render times.
This effect started out as a clone of Photoshop’s Minimum and Maximum filters, which are Adobe’s names for the fundamental digital processes Erode and Dissolve. Working around FXScript’s inability to duplicate this process ironically lead me to discovering that multiple-sided shape-expansion was possible.
Example Images
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The Controls
- Amount (1 - 20)
- The radius of the effect, this is defined the number of iterations out from the source pixel. The larger the value, the larger the resulting shapes. Larger values can significantly increase rendering times.
- Steps (1 - 50)
- This increases the spacing between Amount iterations while at the same time increasing the total radius of the effect. Most of the time, values of 2 or 3 do not produce visible gaps and can be used to speed up the effect by reducing the amount. The setting (Amount:5, Steps:2) is nearly identical to {Amount:10, Steps: 1} except nearly twice as fast. Larger step values produce a kaleidoscopic blocking effect.
- Method
- Defines the compositing mode for mixing the shapes back onto the image.
- Sides
- Sets the number of sides for the shape the pixels will expand into. Values between whole numbers can be used to produce irregular shapes.
- Angle
- Rotates the expanded shape.
- Preserve Alpha
- Tells Final Cut Pro to maintain the clip’s original alpha channel information.
- Mode, Opacity
- Composite controls to specify how to blend the shape-expanded image back onto the original clip.
Feeds