FX engine guide

Help

Short answers to what goes wrong most often.

The frame says the tool needs WebGL 2

Every effect runs as a shader on the GPU, through WebGL 2. Without it nothing can draw. Update the browser, turn on hardware acceleration in its settings, or try another browser.

Pixel sort is slow

For every pixel, Pixel sort looks up to Range pixels each way, several times over. Lower Range, use a smaller window, or pick another effect. The other effects are light.

The picture keeps moving

Matrix rain, VHS and Noise field move all the time; set Noise field's Speed to 0 to hold it. Turn Animate off in Wave lines and Voronoi. Film grain changes every frame; set it to 0 for a still picture.

A slider does nothing

Some controls only work in one setting: Wave lines' Speed needs Animate on, Crosshatch's Line color needs Custom, Noise field's Amplitude does nothing in Overlay, and Edge detect's Background does nothing with Overlay on.

Crosshatch's fourth layer needs Threshold above about 0.5 and a dark place to show, and Color mode's Background changes only the black an effect leaves, so it does nothing on an effect that leaves no black, such as Halftone in CMYK.

The effect is gone

Check Intensity under Color mode. At 0 it shows your picture without the effect.

My save is smaller than my picture

Saves are the size of the canvas on the screen, not of the picture. See Keep your work.

Does it work on a phone or tablet?

Yes, all 15 effects are there. On a phone, a touch screen or a window under 900 pixels wide, a picture bigger than 1,024 pixels on its long side is shrunk to 1,024 first, and the canvas draws at most 1,024 pixels on its long side. The line under Image shows the size in use.

The effects sit in a row above the picture; slide it sideways. Tap the bar at the bottom for the controls.

My big picture is slow

On a wide screen the picture keeps its full size. The effects redraw every frame, so a very big picture works the GPU harder. The save is the canvas size anyway, so a smaller copy loses nothing.

The picture did not load

Files that are not pictures are ignored. If a picture does not show, the browser cannot open it; save it as a PNG or JPEG and try again.

Copy did nothing

Some browsers do not let a page put a picture on the clipboard. The tool then says so; use Save PNG instead.

Is my picture uploaded?

No. It is drawn on your device and never leaves it.

Why is a picture from another tool here?

Pictures you add are kept on this device for every lab tool that takes one, so you need not add them again. Press × on a tile to forget that picture; the picture the page opens with comes back.

Are there keyboard shortcuts?

The tool has none of its own. Anywhere in the lab, Ctrl K, or Cmd K on a Mac, opens the list of all tools.

Why does the video stop by itself?

Record video keeps exactly one sweep, Seconds a cycle long, so the clip loops when it plays. It is an MP4 in H.264, the kind phones, Photos and Instagram play.