Plugin manual
Latest release
v2.2.0
-
Overview
-
Main window
-
Input Image
-
General Settings
-
Glare
-
Color
-
Mask
-
Helper Switches
-
Glare Spectrum
-
Light Dispersion
-
Installed Presets
-
User Presets
ONIRIC UI
FEATURES
Oniric has been evolving over the years to bring an expansion
to your artistic imagination. This time we included a lot more amazing and
useful features to make your workflow easier and boost your creativity to
another level.
v2.1
M1 Compatibility
M1 support for Mac. Oniric doesn't need Rosetta anymore to work properly in Mac computers this means full compatibility with M1 Mac chips.
v2.0
Improved algorithm
New physically-based algorithm delivers a more realistic light falloff thus obtaining more beautiful and striking glows than ever.
v2.0
Redesigned UI
UI has been redesigned for a better user experience.
v2.0
Transparency
Rendering transparent glows is now possible. Oniric can remove the black background leaving only the glow visible.
v2.0
Channels
From a selected layer its luminosity or transparency data can be automatically copied into a new channel and load it as mask inside Oniric.
v2.0
32-bit support
It is now possible to create glows for 32-bit images. This means insane amount of dynamic range and very bright glows from small areas.
v2.0
Core glow
>The core glow opacity can be adjusted to use a higher radius with a more beautiful light falloff from the core.
v2.0
Glare
Glare is the improved algorithm of old Oniric Streaks with newer and more powerful settings.
v2.0
Enhanced exposure
Values have been changed to exposure steps (-5.0 - +5.0 ) as in real cameras, this also gives you more power for brightening and darkening your glows.
v2.0
Gamma
One of the most useful new features mixed with the new physically-based algorithm is Gamma; a game changer for smoother and more realistic glows.
v2.0
16bit preview
To improve the glow in the preview, a 16bit switch has beend added. By default it is ON, but it can be turned off to optimize the preview speed.
v2.0
Glow isolation
In the preview, the glow can be isolated from the input image to see it against a black background. If transparency is ON, you'll see it against a transparent background.
v2.0
Enhanced XRAY
XRAY has more range and has been improved with a temperature gradient map to visualize more easily the highlights.
Main window
Oniric's main window has buttons to create and edit your glows, it also has a channel section to create channels based on the selected layer data.
New
Button
Creates a new layer named 'Oniric_Element' on top of your layer hirerarchy and converts it to a Smart Object, then opens the smart object and the Oniric UI is expanded showing the settings to customize the glow.
Edit
Button
As Oniric workflow is non-destructive, by pressing the Edit button it opens the selected Oniric_Element layer and expands Oniric's UI showing the settings to customize the glow.
Luminosity
Channels / Button
Creates a new channel using the selected layer luminance data. Multiple layers can be selected and creates a new channel with all the selected layers luminance data.
Transparency
Channels / Button
Creates a new channel using the selected layer transparency data. Multiple layers can be selected and creates a new channel with all the selected layers transparency data.
Creating channels and loading them into the mask inside Oniric
The best way to make use of Channels created by Oniric is to load them into the mask to have better control over the areas you want to generate a glow from. For example: You can create a luminosity channel by selecting a particles overlay layer and click the Luminosity button, then create a new glow to open Oniric, enable the mask feature and then click on Load Channel, this will load it into the mask to make glow only the luminance data from your particles overlay and isolate everything in your image except the particles..
Input Image
This settings will control how much light Oniric will get from the input image to generate the glow from. Oniric takes the brightest pixels from the input image, the amount of pixels that Oniric will get is determined by the threshold and dynamic range.
Transition
Option menu
SOFT transition will create gradual mask controlled bye the THRESHOLD to obtain luminance data from the input image. HARD will create a straight mask controlled bye the THRESHOLD to obtain the luminance data from the input image.
Threshold
Slider
Controls the amount of light that Oniric is getting from the input image to generate the glow from. The higher the value the wider the range of light injected into Oniric and softer the transition when transition is set to 'SOFT'.
Dynamic Range
Slider
Increases the brightness of the input image. If the input image doesn't have enough higlights the Dynamic Range slider will bring those highlits out.
Using xRay to preview Threshold and Dynamic Range behaviour.
When Oniric is opened, the Helper Switches will be at the bottom, in this section the xRay can be found. Turning ON the xRay switch will help to visualize the light that Oniric is getting from the input image to generate the glow from. The warmer the color the more light Oniric is getting and the brighter the glow will be.
General Settings
Glow general settings
Main Opacity
Slider
Controls the main opacity of the whole glow.
Core Opacity
Slider
Controls the core opacity of the glow. 50% of glow's falloff from the glow center / core is considered as the 'Core Glow.'
Radius
Slider
Controls how spread or blured the glow will be. Works exactly the same as gaussian blur.
Exposure
Slider
Brightens or darkens the glow.
Gamma
Slider
Controls the glow gamma. The higher the values the softer and more ambient glow can be created; a game changer for smoother and more realistic glows.
Glare
Glare is an effect created by excessive brightness or low contrast, and we as artist love it, it helps us to make digital art look more realistic, closer to what our eyes can perceive. Oniric uses algorithms to try to recreate this effect and with the help of more settings the Glare can be customized to open more creative options to the artist.
Glare
Switch
Activates or deactivates the Glare on the glow.
Core
Switch
When turned ON, the Glare considers the glow core on the blending and gives a more burned core, when turned OFF it softens the blending with the core.
Blend
Option menu
The blending mode of the Glare on the BLOOM. By default COLOR DODGE is active. COLOR DODGE blends more realistic into the BLOOM base. LINEAR DODGE blends softer into the BLOOM base.
Rays
Option menu
How many rays / streaks your Glare will have.
Length
Slider
Controls the length of the Glare rays / streaks.
Rotation
Slider
Controls the angle of the Glare rays / streaks.
Detail
Slider
Increasing the detail will make the Glare rays / streaks to break into smaller and thinner ones. This works well to give more variation and more realistic look to the glow.
Color
Oniric glows can be colorized when enabling the 'Colorize Helper Switch' at the bottom and change their overall Hue and Saturation.
Hue
Slider
Controls glow's hue.
Hue Eyedropper
Color picker
Clicking the Hue Eyedropper will enable the posibility to sample a color from the image. Sampling into the image will change glow's Hue and Saturation based on the sampled area.
Saturation
Slider
Controls glow's saturation.
Mask
Mask is an Oniric essential feature to have control over the glows. The mask will determine the areas on your image where Oniric will get the light from to generate the glows. NOTE: The mask is sensitive to opacity so if a table with a pen pressure is used, the more opacity on the mask the more light Oniric will get from that area.
Mask
Switch
Enables or disables the mask feature.
Load channel
Button
Brings out a dialog window with a list of the available channels from the original document. The selected channel will live preview the areas that will be filled and load them into the mask, once the 'Load' button is clicked Oniric will fill the white pixels with the mask color pixels (This is sensitive to the channel luma values), this means the channel has been loaded. Multiple channels can be loaded into the mask by selecting one and clicking 'Load'. To learn more about how to create channels with Oniric go to the 'Main Window' section. Here's an example on how a previously created channel with Oniric channels is loaded into the mask, but we first hit the 'New' button to generate an Oniric_Element and open the UI:
Blur mask
Button
Blurs the mask by 1px. This helps to soften the mask edges.
Brush Tool
Tool Button
Enables the Brush Tool to paint the areas that want to be included in the mask.
Eraser Tool
Tool Button
Enables the Eraser Tool to erase the areas that want to be excluded from the mask.
Invert mask
Tool Button
Inverts the mask.
Color range Eyedropper
Tool Button
Enables the Eyedropper tool to sample a color and creates a mask on top of the sampled color range. I.e. If a green area is targeted, Oniric will sample all the green colors inside a range and createa mask based on that color range sampled. This works better when you have flat colors on the area you want to sample.
Delete mask
Tool Button
Update mask
Button
Tells Oniric to use the Mask as an input to only get the light from the painted areas.
Helper Switches
These are switches to help you with different tasks within Oniric and make the workflow easier.
Auto-update
Switch
When active, Oniric will automatically update after onc setting is changed. If auto-update is deactivated, Oniric won't update until it is activated again. Auto-update can be deactivated to change lot of settings and then activate it to update Oniric.
Unmult / Transparency
Switch
Makes glow's background transparent.
xRay
Switch
Enables a temperature color gradient map to preview the luminance data of the input image. The warmer the color the brightest the glow will be. The red areas are pure white pixels thus obtaining brighter areas of glow on those pixels.
Colorize
Switch
Colorizes the glow and enables the Hue Slider to control its hue. The saturation slider is changed from [ -100 - 100 ] to [ 0 - 100 ].
Isolate
Switch
By turning ON 'Isolate', the glow will be shown against a black background. If Unmult / Transparency is ON, the glow will be visible against a transparent background.
16-Bit Depth
Switch
By default 16-Bit Depth is ON, deactivated changes the glow preview color depth to 8-Bit making it faster to render but with high 'Gamma' or 'Exposure' values some banding can be visible, this is only visible in the preview and not when clicking save. If the input image is either 8-Bit or 16-Bit, Oniric renders the glow in 16-Bit and any banding from the preview is removed, if the input image is 32-Bit Oniric will render the glow in 32-Bit.
Preview
Switch
Turns ON and OFF glow's visibility.
Glare Spectrum
When the 'Glare' section is activated, the Glare Spectrum section is enabled and a spectrum gradient map can be added above the glare. By default the spectrum is turned OFF, once the MIX goes above 0 it turns ON.
Blend
Option menu
The blending mode of the Spectrum into the Glare rays / streaks. By default is set to MULTIPLY. MULTIPLY is softer compared to the other blending modes, sometimes it can compromize the glow core but it can be compesated by enabling the CORE checkbox. OVERLAY is the strongest blend mode, to control its intensity the MIX slider can be used. SOFT LIGHT is the same as OVERLAY but softer.
Mix
Slider
Controls the opacity mix of the Glare Spectrum on the Glare.
Frequency
Slider
Controls the frequency of the RGB colors in the Glare Spectrum gradient.
Blur
Slider
Blurs the RGB colors of the Glare Spectrum making a softer transition from one color to another.
Saturation
Slider
Controls the Saturation of the Glare Spectrum. Saturation at 0 mixed with different values of Frequency gives a nice effect giving more variation to the rays / streaks detail and a more realistic feel.
Light Dispersion
This will separate the glow RGB channels with the selected algorithm type: CENTER or OFFSET. You can set the separation distance between each color channel and make variatons by mixing two channels with the RGB switches. Interesting chromatic aberration effects can be achieved with this setting.
Type
Option menu
Algorithm which will control how the Light Dispersion will behave. CENTER breaks the glow RGB channels from center the peripheries of the image tryting to recreate the light phenomenon known as 'Axial chromatic aberration'. OFFSET breaks the RGB channels at -45 degrees which tries to recreate the light phenomenon known as 'Lateral Chromatic Aberration' the one that causes color fringing.
Distance
Slider
Controls how far the RGB channels will separate from each other.
RGB Switches
Switches
Turning ON two channels simultaneously will add the active channels resulting in the complementary color of the other channel left. Activating the three colors or deactivating all of them won't make any changes, this only works to merge two colors. This can simulate realife chromatic aberration on the glows.
Installed Presets
A list of factory and installed presets. Clicking one will automatically load the settings saved on that preset and update the glow.
User Presets
New
Button
Will show a dialog window to choose a name for the new preset and save it.
Add presets
Button
Opens a window to search for a folder containing a presets file, once the route is located, pressing 'select folder' will add the presets to Oniric.