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Color Wheel

Paints a hue wheel: the colours go round the centre and reach full strength at the rim.

Group: Generate · How to add an effect

The dancer on stage with a round hue wheel centred on her at half mix: pale in the middle, red at the right edge, yellow at the upper right, green at the upper left, cyan at the left, blue at the lower left and magenta at the lower right, with dark stage around the wheel

The default Color Wheel (Disc, Radius 45 %) at Mix 0.5.

Use it for: a colour reference for a projector or a camera · a coloured gel spot over the picture · a turning, psychedelic background.

  • Shape – Disc (the default) draws a round wheel with a clean edge over the clip; Fill layer colours the whole layer (or only the inside of a shape layer).
  • Radius, Center X and Center Y – size and place of the disc, in % of the shorter side and of the layer.
  • Direction – hues run counter-clockwise like the usual HSV wheel (red at the right, yellow upper right, green upper left, blue lower left), or clockwise.
  • Hue Rotation – turns the colours round, in degrees. Spin keeps them turning (degrees per second) and can be keyframed for a smooth speed-up.
  • Saturation, Brightness and Mix – how strong and bright the colours are and how much of the clip shows through.

Tip: on a Blank clip, Disc gives a wheel on a transparent background.

Control Range Default
Shape Disc, Fill layer Disc
Radius 1 to 100% 45%
Center X 0 to 100% 50%
Center Y 0 to 100% 50%
Direction Counter-clockwise, Clockwise Counter-clockwise
Hue Rotation −1440 to 1440° 0°
Spin −1440 to 1440°/s 0°/s
Saturation 0 to 4 1
Brightness 0 to 1 1
Mix 0 to 1 1

Color Wheel draws its picture in one built-in step: there is no graph to open. Everything you can change is in its card.

  • Units. Hue Rotation and Spin are stored in turns and shown in ° and °/s. Radius is a share of the shorter side, Center X/Y of the layer.
  • Disc has a one-pixel anti-aliased edge and is laid over the clip as straight-alpha “over”.
  • Spin is a rate: a keyframed Spin speeds up and slows down smoothly (keyframed rates).
  • Saved projects. Instances saved before Shape, Direction and Radius existed render with Fill layer, clockwise and Radius 0.5; the inspector shows these values. The new defaults (Disc, Radius 45 %, Saturation 1) apply only to new instances.

More: Effect system.