Glint Bloom

Threshold decides what sparkles, and its default of 232 is high on purpose — only the hottest points in the plate get through, which is what keeps the effect reading as jewelry instead of a haze. Lower it toward 180 for a busier field (wet asphalt, a glitter costume, chop on water), and keep it up above 240 when you want a single hero highlight to be the only thing that stars.

Threshold Soft ramps that gate. At low values the cutoff is close to a step and highlights snap in and out as they cross it; Threshold Soft 20–40 is the range that stops flickering on moving footage without dragging the whole plate into the sparkle field. Raise it before you lower Threshold — a softer gate usually fixes a sparse field more gracefully than a lower one.

The star itself is three dials. Spike Count sets the number of spokes, from Spike Count = 2 (a clean two-point flash) through the default 4, up to Spike Count = 16 for a dense burst. Spike Length is the reach in pixels, and it is the dial most likely to break the illusion — keep Spike Length under about 40 and it reads as glitter, push past 60 and you’ve built a star filter instead. Core Size is the soft disc beneath the spokes; the default 3 gives each glint a center to hang off, and Core Size 6–10 makes each sparkle feel like a light rather than a point.

Rotation turns every glint in the frame together, in degrees. It re-aims the spokes without changing the star’s shape, so what actually changes is the relationship between the spokes and the plate’s own lines — audition it against the shot rather than computing a number. The useful move is usually small: on locked-off shots a few degrees off axis (Rotation 5–15) is all it takes to stop the pattern from looking stamped on, because the spokes stop agreeing with the product’s or the frame’s edges. Larger values are for plates with a strong diagonal you want the spokes to cut across; the slider stops at ±90, and the hard range takes it to a half turn in either direction.

Twinkle Amount is off by default, and turning it on is what separates a sparkle field from a decal. It modulates each glint’s energy over time, and the animation is desynchronized per glint — a hundred highlights on a water surface each hit their peak at their own moment instead of breathing together. Twinkle Amount 40–80 is the lively zone; below 20 you get a faint shimmer that survives a slow dolly, and at 100 glints drop close to nothing between peaks, which reads as hard scintillation rather than sparkle.

Twinkle Speed sets the rate, with the default 1 as the effect’s base tempo. Twinkle Speed 0.4–0.8 is a slow jewelry breathe for a locked-off product shot, and Twinkle Speed 2–4 is agitated chop or fast glitter. Rate and amount trade against each other — a fast twinkle at high amount strobes, so when you push Twinkle Speed past 2, pull Twinkle Amount back toward 40.

Twinkle Phase offsets the entire cycle without changing its rate. Two uses: land the brightest moment of a hero glint on a specific frame by walking the offset until it reads, and stack two instances of Glint Bloom at different Twinkle Phase values so a doubled field never has its two passes agreeing. Keyframing it is a third — a ramp on Twinkle Phase drives the shimmer by hand, retimable and easable in a way Twinkle Speed isn’t. The slider stops at ±180, but the dial accepts values out to ±3600, which is the room a long hand-driven ramp needs.

Chromatic Fringe breaks color along the spokes — the prism split a real cut surface or a wet edge throws when it catches a light. It’s off by default. Chromatic Fringe 15–35 is the range where it registers as material rather than as an effect; past 60 the spokes read as three colored stars stacked, which is a deliberately synthetic look. On a diamond or a frost crystal, a little fringe does more for believability than any amount of extra Spike Length.

The color triad grades the glints by tonal zone. Shadows, Midtones, and Highlights all default to white, which is the neutral law — leave them there and the glints take the color of whatever they came from. Move one at a time and watch the result: tinting a single zone splits the glint’s color by brightness, which is how you get a sparkle that is cool where it’s faint and honest where it’s hot, or the reverse, without touching the plate. Small moves read strongly here, because the eye takes a glint for a light source and expects it near white — a tint you can name by looking at it is usually already too far.

Boost is the energy dial, and at its default 0 the glints render at their natural level off the gate. It is also the dial Master Amount multiplies, so raising it off 0 is what gives that macro something to ride — a fresh instance has a Master Amount slider with nothing under it. Boost 10–30 is the working zone for footage — enough to make the sparkles sit forward without blowing the spokes into flat white. Push toward Boost = 60 or higher for graphics and title work, where you want the glints to be the subject rather than a texture.

Glint Only drops the source image and outputs only the sparkle pass. That’s the compositing route: put Glint Bloom on a duplicate layer with Glint Only on, blend it over the plate, and you can grade, offset in time, or mask the sparkles independently of the shot. Quality steps the render across four levels — work at Q1 or Q2 while you dial the gate on a heavy comp, and set Q4 for the final render.

Four macro dials ride the look you’ve already built, all neutral at 100. Master Amount multiplies Boost — so it is the dial to keyframe when the glints should arrive with a reveal, once Boost is doing something. Boost ships at 0, and a multiplier over 0 is still 0, so Master Amount has nothing to scale on a fresh instance no matter where you drag it. Set your level on Boost first, then hand the ride to Master Amount. Master Scale multiplies Spike Length and Core Size together, which keeps the spike-to-disc ratio you dialed in: build the glint at one resolution, then take a 1080p look to a 4K comp with a single value.

Master Complexity scales Spike Count. Because spoke count is a whole number, this one steps rather than glides — Master Complexity = 200 doubles a four-point star to eight — so treat it as a coarse switch between shapes, not an animation surface. Master Speed drives the twinkle rate, which is the right handle for retiming: slow a sparkle field for a slow-motion shot with Master Speed = 40 and the shimmer stretches without you re-dialing Twinkle Speed.

The suite rule applies here too: ride either a Master dial or the dial it folds. Animating Master Amount and Boost at the same time multiplies the change twice, and the result rarely looks like what either curve says.