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Created by John Knoll, Photoshop co-creator and Star Wars effects guru, Knoll Light Factory is one of the industry's most popular motion graphics tools. It is most famous for its high-fidelity simulations of light effects called flares, which simulate reflections from a very bright light source as seen through a camera's lens. Knoll Light Factory is Hollywood's go-to tool for adding interest to text or logos or extra pop to FX explosions. Now includes CS5/64 bit compatibility, new custom flares, Knoll 3D Flare and a new Lens Designer for Adobe CS5 users.

HIGHLIGHTS:

Custom Lens Editor

Build your own flares or edit a preset with the custom lens editor. Choose from elements such as StarFilter, Ellipse, or PhotonSpikeBall, and control each element's position, color, scale, thickness, angle, and width. You also get pinpoint control over brightness, scale and color of the lens as a whole.

70 powerful presets

Use the same presets that the pros turn to every day for sports events and major motion pictures. Presets include Desert Sun, Arc Welder, Generic Panavision, Spikey Glow, Pv1 (for exploding stars), RedLaser, RockConcert, Omnimax (a flare seen on IMAX projection), or Distant Quantum (the original photon torpedo).

Auto-obscuration tools

Flares can be obscured by objects (cars, enemy spacecraft) that come between them and the viewer. The auto-track feature tracks specific points in an existing alpha channel, making flare location a snap. The integrated Knoll Unmult tool generates alphas, making it easier to include lights and flares in complex composites.

FEATURES:

Customizable Presets
Choose from 70 presets or customize them to suit your needs. 

Lens Editor
Use the custom lens editor to create and save your own unique effects for future use. 

Custom Light Effects
19 lens elements in the main plug-in create custom light effects. Each element is also included as a separate plug-in for creating complex motion graphics. 

Automatic Tracking
The auto track feature tracks multiple points and adds multiple identical lighting points to a scene. 

GPU Support
Offers up to 10x render speed improvements, compared to a single CPU 

Auto Obscuration
Automatically hides or reveals a light effect as the light source moves behind another object, automatically adjusting the light's brightness as it is obscured. 

Light Factory EZ Plug-in
Included with the package, Light Factory EZ gives you access to all 70 flares with a single click.

Alpha Generation
Generate integrated alpha channels automatically with Knoll Unmult.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:

Our tests have shown that the our products perform best when used with the system configurations listed below. Although many of our products will run on older or less-powerful systems, those listed below are the minimum system requirements which we support. 

Apple Macintosh

Mac OSX 10.4.11 and later

Mac Intel
1 GB of RAM
30 MB of Hard Drive space

PC / Windows

Windows XP SP1 or later

Windows Vista 32-bit and 64-bit

Windows 7 32-bit and 64-bit
Pentium 4 2.4 GHz or faster (or AMD equivalent)
1 GB of RAM
30 MB of Hard Drive space

For more information on compatibility click here.