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Light & lasers effect

Neon Edges

Neon Edges is a neon and laser effect in FRCTL, the browser VJ studio. Sobel-style outlines with hot pink and cyan glow.

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 Neon Edges 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 traced in glowing outlines, cyan on the left shading to magenta on the right — Neon Edges, default settings

What Neon Edges does

Finds every brightness edge, dims the rest of the picture and redraws the edges as glowing outlines graded from one colour to another across the frame, cyan on the left into magenta on the right by default. Edge catches fainter lines, Halo thickens the glow, Pair sets how far the second colour sits from Hue, and Direction picks which way the grade runs, including out from the centre.

Using Neon Edges

Where it works: Logo stings and line-art covers, since it turns any drawn or high-contrast image into a neon sign. Live, it's the quickest way to make camera footage of the crowd read as outlines.
With the music: It's a static trace. Route B1 kick to Halo so the outlines bloom on every kick, and a BPM-synced LFO on Hue walks both colours round the wheel together.
Starting point: Edge at centre, Halo at three-quarters, Pair at centre, Direction on Right for the classic cyan-to-pink sign.

Controls

Edge: Edge detection sensitivity.
Halo: Additive glow around edges.
Core: Brightness of the picture between the outlines. Left drops it to black for pure neon lines, right keeps it near full.
Hue: Colour the outlines start from at the near end of the frame.
Pair: How far the far colour sits from Hue. Hard left is a single colour, centre the authored cyan into pink.
Direction: Which way the pair of outline colours runs across the frame.

Pairs well with Neon Edges