Magic Bullet Colorista II is here, and it’s taking names. It’s seriously supped up and ready to unleash color in your timeline. You can learn more about it here. Or just give in the inevitable… and buy it here.

Here’s a first look at what’s new in Colorista II, from the DV Rebel himself, Stu Maschwitz.

In these episodes of Red Giant TV, Aharon Rabinowitz sits down with VFX legend John Knoll to talk about John’s work at ILM, how he got started, what it takes to make it as a vfx artist, and some of his favorite projects.

Watch the interview with John Knoll – Part 2

View the Bonus Material

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In celebration of our interview with VFX legend John Knoll, get 20% off Knoll Light Factory and Knoll Light Factory for Photoshop. Both products qualify for FREE 64-bit updates (Adobe CS5 compatible) as soon as they are available.

The sale runs through Monday May 31, 2010 at 11:59 PM PST (California). To find out when the sale ends in your time zone, visit the World Clock site.

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Photoshop co-creator, John Knoll, developed Knoll Light Factory to mimic the reflections from a very bright light source as seen through a camera’s lens. It’s proven to be one of the most popular plug-ins for both Adobe Photoshop and After Effects. Knoll Light Factory for Photoshop goes far beyond the typical lens flares found in Photoshop, with over 100 great presets, real-time previewing, and 19 powerful flare tools for creating your own custom effects. (Learn More)

Download trial version

Buy now for $119.20 (Save $29.80) Note: includes FREE 64-bit update (Adobe CS5 compatible) as soon as it is available.

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Created by John Knoll, Star Wars effects guru, Knoll Light Factory is one of the industry’s most popular motion graphics tools. It is most famous for its high-fidelity simulations of light effects called flares, which simulate reflections from a very bright light source as seen through a camera’s lens. Knoll Light Factory for Photoshop is Hollywood’s go-to tool for adding interest to text or logos or extra pop to FX explosions. Works in After Effects, Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, Motion, and Avid. (Learn More)

Download trial version

Buy now for $319.20 (Save $79.80) Note: includes FREE 64-bit update (Adobe CS5 compatible) as soon as it is available.

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Free Stuff

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Free Presets for Knoll Light Factory Pro

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Introducing 10 new awesome presets for Knoll Light Factory Pro from Veteran motion graphics and VFX artist David Vinson. These flares reminiscent of popular films, tv shows, music videos and commercials, will work in After Effects, Final Cut Pro, Motion, Premiere Pro, and Avid Express and Media Composer. These presets are free for limited time.

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Download the free presets.

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Free Training for Knoll Light Factory

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Knoll Light Factory Training covers version 2.5, used by thousands of motion graphics artists and editors to create light effects and transitions. Professional trainer and motion graphic designer, David Vinson shows you how to simulate the sun or other light sources, enhance text or logos, intensify special effects shots like explosions and more in this 90 minutes of advanced training.

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Watch the training.

iPod/iPad friendly version on Vimeo.

Introducing Red Giant Software’s Plastic Bullet: A Photo App with infinite possibilities.

Plastic Bullet puts the fun, spontaneity, and unpredictability of plastic-fantastic toy cameras right into your pocket. Just tap to turn your photos into gloriously unpredictable works of art, then tap again to change the look.

Get it on your iPhone now, for just $1.99 at the Apple App Store: itunes.apple.com/us/app/plastic-bullet/id372405516?mt=8

We built this site in response to user requests that we have heard for awhile. First, Magic Bullet Looks users wanted a way to share looks (.ls3) files with others. Second, we wanted to revive a sharing site called Trapcode People that had some great content for Trapcode products. So we combined these into a bigger vision to allow you to share content for all Trapcode products, Magic Bullet Looks, Knoll Light Factory, ToonIt, and more.

When we launch there will be several dozen free presets for 3D stroke, ToonIt, Particular and more. All the presets have video previews for the site. To get any of these free presets, you must sign up and get an account. Please use your real name and a valid email address. Once you validate you account, you can get all the content on the site, and even start sharing presets and projects on your own.

In addition to the free content, you will be able to browse the hundreds of presets that our site leaders—our Gurus—have built. These collections of presets are all professionally designed by broadcast designers. You can browse the paid presets individually, or see related content in a product in the Guru Store. If you like what you see, click the buy button and you will be taken to Red Giant Software to purchase the package.

We will have a video tour, help and other assets on the site to help you get the most from Red Giant People. But to really make this site work, we need your help and hopefully your generosity to share projects and preset files with other Red Giant users so that everyone benefits from the assets that the community creates.

I hope you will join Red Giant People.

So what does this mean for my plug-ins? It means you will need all NEW plug-ins to work in the 64-bit world. We have been working in earnest with Adobe to update all of our currently shipping plug-ins to work in 64-bit mode. In fact, we have had multiple engineers and quality assurance folks rebuilding our plug-ins over the last 5 months to make them work efficiently in After Effects in 64-bit mode.

Will you need to buy an upgrade to the new version? Yes. Many of the products required extensive reworking of code because the product was originally designed when Mac OS 8 and Windows 95 ruled the world. Some of our tools go back to the mid-90s and they were never designed for 64-bit. To recoup the cost of months of engineering, we must charge something. Since this upgrade is mostly about speed (more on this below) and compatibility,  we are only charging $29 to upgrade to any single 64-bit version of our plug-ins. For Trapcode and Magic Bullet Suite customers, we will have a special discount price for the whole suite.

Are there any benefits to the new versions in 64-bit mode? Yes. 64-bit applications get to take advantage of all the memory in your system. So on a Mac Pro, the 64-bit native version of After Effects can use a big chunk of the 16 GB (or more) in a system for doing longer RAM previews, better caching, and dealing with larger file sizes like 2K, 4K or even larger images. Anyone who has ever run into memory limits with large 3D comps will find a big benefit to working natively in 64-bit.

As Michael Coleman recently wrote, After Effects will also be faster in 64-bit (you can read about it here). We have found that our own tools are also benefiting from 64-bit. We ran a quick test on Peder Norrby’s Trapcode Particular v2 – Massive benchmark project (you can find it here) which uses most of the Trapcode plug-ins including Form, Lux, Particular and Horizon and the speed improved by about 34%. The total render time dropped by 11 minutes on the same project compared to CS4. Multiply that out by many renders or RAM previews in a day, and that adds up to significant time savings when you use a 64-bit optimized app and plug-ins.

Rest assured that Red Giant is going to be ready with many of our most popular tools soon after Adobe releases the next version of After Effects. All of our plug-ins will be 64-bit ready in Summer 2010. Welcome to the future.

Watch the tutorial here.

In the grand scheme of things, this definitely isn’t a groundbreaking tutorial – It’s more of a short demonstration of how fast and simple it is to set up a cool effect with some very basic AE animation chops and the right set of tools. I hope you enjoy.

Hi Folks – Next week, I’ll be flying out to  San Francisco to interview John Knoll, for Red Giant TV. Unless you’ve been living in a cave free of VFX news, you know that John Knoll was ILM’s Visual Effects Supervisor for Avatar, Star Wars,  and many other films. He is one of Hollywood’s most in-demand collaborators for VFX, having won many awards (including an Oscar) for his contributions to some of the biggest films of all time.

We’ll be talking about his film work, co-creating Photoshop with his brother Thomas, and the evolution and use of his popular software, Knoll Light Factory,  in motion graphics and films like Avatar, Transformers,  J. J. Abram’s Star Trek, and many others.

I’m incredibly excited. I’ve worked with and met a lot of cool people, but this is a whole other thing. His influence on what we do is so profound, I just hope I don’t forget my own name** when I sit down with him, let alone remember to ask him some worthwhile questions about his work. So I need your help…

If there’s anything you ever wanted to ask this visual effects master, post it here, and I may just ask it for you.

No promises – but make it good, and I’ll do my best.

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** That may or may not have happened to me when I worked with Director Frank Oz (a.k.a. Yoda). I can neither confirm nor deny.

Just wanted to let you know that Knoll 3D Flare has been released. This free set of tools that allows you to easily create Knoll Lens Flares in After Effects 3D space. This add-on for Knoll Light Factory (2.5) in After Effects includes fantastic features like Edge flare-ups, color linking, Z-depth intensity, and full 3D obscuration.

You can learn more about it and its feature set here.

The short version is that Knoll 3D Flare adds 3D (and other) features into Knoll Light Factory Pro – the lens flare tools  used in Avatar, Transformers 1 and 2, Star Trek (yes, the J.J. Abrams one), and many MANY other films. Download a trial, and you’ll see why Knoll Light Factory continues to be Hollywood’s go-to lens flare tool.

Let us know what you think of Knoll 3D Flare. We look forward to hearing from you.

We want to show our appreciation to all our dedicated fans with a Secret Sale. We are offering 40% off all products. This includes already-discounted bundles and suites such as Trapcode Suite or Magic Bullet Suite, as well as the brand new Red Giant Holomatrix.

The sale runs through Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2009 at 11:59 PM PST (California). To find out when the sale ends in your time zone, visit the World Clock site.

This sale is ONE DAY ONLY. Enter Coupon Code secretsale40 during checkout to redeem your discount on the page titled Review and Submit Your Order. (Note: The coupon code field appears after you have entered your credit card information and hit Continue.) ]]> http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/blog/2009/12/07/get-40-off-all-red-giant-products/feed/ 3 http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/blog/2009/12/07/get-40-off-all-red-giant-products/