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Pulse & motion effect

Chroma Breathing

Chroma Breathing is a beat-reactive motion effect in FRCTL, the browser VJ studio. Luminance-driven sine waves pulse through hue and saturation, on the source hue or on a palette of its own.

Runs live on video, images, a camera or generated art. Stack it with any other effect, and route LFOs, envelopes or any of ten audio bands to its controls so it moves with the music.

Try Chroma Breathing free All effects

The untouched demo art: an eye inside a triangle over wavy teal, blue and peach lines — Source

The eye-in-triangle art recoloured in lime, yellow, teal and violet, the wavy lines in mixed hues — Chroma Breathing, default settings

What Chroma Breathing does

Swings hue and lifts saturation and brightness on a sine that cycles about every three seconds, its phase scattered by brightness so colour ripples through the tones. Palette on Shift turns the existing colours, while Split, Prism and Bands assign hue from brightness, so grey footage comes back coloured. Hue sets the swing, past a full turn at hard right, and Spread hard left makes the frame breathe as one.

Using Chroma Breathing

Where it works: Recolours a picture without moving a pixel, so a logo or cover keeps its shape while its palette cycles. Bands over a greyscale photo gives flat poster colour, handy for a loop in a pack.
With the music: The breath keeps its own three-second clock and ignores the tempo. B2 (sub bass) on Value flashes brightness with the low end, and an LFO synced to the bar on Tint walks the whole palette round the wheel.
Starting point: Palette on Prism, Tint at the brand colour, Spread a quarter, Hue centre, Saturation three-quarters.

Controls

Hue: How far the hue travels each breath. Centre is the authored swing, hard right a full turn of the wheel.
Saturation: Breathing saturation boost.
Value: Brightness pulse on value channel.
Palette: Shift rotates the hue already in the frame. The other three assign it from brightness instead, so a grey source comes back in full chroma.
Tint: Hue the palette is anchored to, and a standing offset under the Shift rotation.
Spread: How far the breath scatters across the frame. Hard left is one breath the whole image shares.
Direction: Which way the breath travels across the frame.
Speed: Rate of the effect motion. Centre is the authored speed, hard left a tenth of it.

Pairs well with Chroma Breathing