The effect stack
The applied stack is shown in two places that render the same thing: the Effects section of the Properties panel, and the Effect Controls panel (F3, or Window ▸ Effect Controls). Every effect applied to the selected layer appears in order, and order matters — a blur after a glow is a different picture from a glow after a blur.
Adding an effect
| Route | Best for |
|---|---|
| The Effects panel | Browsing the full catalogue: search, folders, favourites, effect presets |
| The + on the Effects section’s header | Adding one beside the stack you are editing |
| The Effect menu bar entry | Every effect, filed in the same folders as the Effects browser and sorted by name inside each. It applies to every selected layer as one undo step |
| Dragging an effect from the library onto a layer on canvas | Fastest when you already know what you want |
| The command palette | When you know the name |
Per-effect controls
Each applied effect gets:
- An enable toggle — turn it off without losing its settings.
- Reorder handles.
- Remove.
- One row per parameter.
Keyframing parameters
Numeric parameters are keyframeable like any other property: the stopwatch creates a track that is sampled per frame along with everything else. There is nothing second-class about an effect keyframe — it appears in the timeline and in the graph editor exactly like a transform keyframe.
Press U on a layer with animated effects and the effect parameter rows appear alongside the transform ones. This is the quickest way to audit what an imported or preset-applied layer is actually doing.
The curve editor
The Curves effect gets a dedicated tone-curve editor:
- Drag a point to move it.
- Click empty space on the curve to add a point.
- Alt-click a point to remove it.
- The endpoints are pinned in X, so the curve always spans the full range.
Special parameter types
Most parameters are numbers, colours or booleans. Two are worth calling out:
- Displacement Map takes a layer parameter — you point it at another layer, whose pixels drive the displacement.
- Channel Mixer exposes the full 12-coefficient matrix plus a monochrome switch.
Effects on groups
An effect applies to the layer it sits on. To apply one to several layers as a unit, you have two options:
- Pre-compose them and put the effect on the pre-comp. The subtree renders to its own framebuffer, so the effect sees the composited group.
- Use an adjustment layer above them, which applies its effects to everything beneath.
Where effects run
Effects are drawn by the engine, on the GPU, on the same render graph the export uses. That is why a stack of effects on footage plays at full speed, and why a faded effect (Effect Opacity) or one limited to a mask stays on the GPU instead of falling back to a CPU pass. In the engine’s effects benchmark, all 393 cases run above 24 fps; on a 1080p layer, an Inner Shadow went from about a second per frame to 3 ms, and a Stroke from 0.8 s to about 1 ms.
If a stack is slow, the viewport HUD’s per-frame timings (View ▸ Viewport ▸ Performance HUD) tell you whether it is the stack or something else.
Related
- Effect catalog — every effect, with the parameters worth knowing
- Compositing — blend modes, mattes, motion blur
- Masks & mattes