GenArts ships Sapphire 8

Originally posted on 24 November. Scroll down for updates.

GenArts has unveiled Sapphire 8, the latest update to its industry-standard collection of preset effects, transitions and looks for editing, compositing and finishing software.

Three new effects, updates to Shake preset
New effects introduced in the release include the self-explanatory LightLeak and Grunge, plus DigitalDamage, which simulates playback glitches and compression errors in digital footage.

The existing Shake effect has also been updated with extra functionality, including the option to separate colour channels as the picture shakes.

New tools for browsing presets and building custom effects
If you’re using After Effects, Premiere Pro or Media Composer, you also get the enhanced preset browser, which enables you to browse effects in thematic groups and see the results applied to footage in real time.

But perhaps most interestingly of all, you also get Builder, which enables you to create custom effects or transitions by wiring together existing presets using a standard node graph.

The toolset can be used to create some quite complex effects, as you can see in this demo video.

Pricing and availability
Sapphire 8 is available for After Effects, Premiere Pro, Media Composer, Smoke, Flame, Nuke and DaVinci Resolve running on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. It also works with other OFX-compatible tools.

Updated 21 December: Sapphire 8 is now shipping. GenArts has introduced a new pricing plan, but new licences cost $1,699 for most host software or $2,800 for Avid, including a year of support.

Read more about the new features in Sapphire 8 (Includes demo videos of the new tools and effects)