Easily add blockbuster-worthy effects and looks to your photos with Optics. The toolbox, created by Academy Award-winning effects artists, delivers Hollywood film-quality lighting and lens effects, curated film looks, and realistic particle creation to photographers and digital artists.

Highlights include over 180 filters and 1000s of gorgeous presets in 10 categories: Color, Diffusion/Blurs, Film Lab, Grads/Tints, Image, Lens/Distort, Light, Render, Stylize, and Particle Illusion.

Optics is available as a plugin for Adobe Photoshop & Lightroom and a standalone application.

New for 2024   

• 8 Filters: Atmospheric Glow, Magic Sharp, Orbs, Prism, S_PrismLens, Smoke and Fog, Super LED, and S_UltraGrain
• Particle Illusion: Adds masking, trails, gradient presets, 3D deflectors, force turbulence, and more
• More Presets: 100+ professionally designed and curated presets

Particle Illusion Update   

Particle Illusion adds even more creative features to elevate motion graphics workflows.

• Emit particles from masks
• Add artistic flair to animations with particle trails
• Easily update particle colors with an enhanced gradient editor and presets
• Add organic motion using force object direction turbulence
• Create faster with dozens of usability improvements

FAST AND CREATIVE PHOTO MANIPULATION

Optics features a robust layer-based compositing interface and powerful, flexible masking tools. Tackle everything from simple photo editing to full image manipulations to designing and generating custom assets and graphics.

The Best Lighting Effects   

Explore the largest collection of procedural lens flares, lighting, gobos, and particle effects for photography. Just say no to stock footage elements. Quickly design, edit, and save your own libraries of presets of favorites with Optics.

Combine and build your own library of presets and favorites. Everything in Optics is procedural for creative control.

Artist Tested. Hollywood Proven.

Optics gives you access to the same plugins and filters regularly used on the most popular films and TV series with the addition of top tools from the Boris FX Suite.

Add Lens Flares, Light Rays, Ultra Zap (lightning), UltraGlow, Light Leaks, and many more effects from our Emmy Award-winning Sapphire collection, or retouch skin easily with Continuum’s Beauty Studio.

Stunning Particle Creation

The Particle Illusion category is a fast and easy-to-use particle engine that creates unique effects and elements.

Particle Illusion features 1700+ particle presets to enhance photo editing, including Smoke, Fire, Water, Sparkles, Explosions, Dust, Sci-Fi, and more. Learn more about Particle Illusion.

You can also create and export cinemagraphs — photo animations — using Optics in Photoshop, Lightroom, or the standalone application.

Get started with cinemagraphs. Watch Now

Physical Camera Characteristics

Optics is the only Photoshop plugin that emulates the physical characteristics of optical camera filters, whether it’s historical film stocks, color grading, or lens and diffusion effects.

Add beauty and depth to your digital images with diffusion filters like Mist, Fog, Net, Halo, and more.

Packed with Effect Presets 

• 600+ film stocks and film looks

• 126 optical lens flare presets from Boris FX Sapphire

• 800+ Gobo lighting patterns

• 1700+ particle presets, including Abstracts, Dust, Smoke, Fire, and more

Masking and Paint Tools

Optics features powerful masking and paint tools to replace backgrounds, isolate effects, or fix and touch up pixels.

• EZ Mask with gestural stroke-based masking
• Gradient, Spot, Path, Snap, Selection, and Paint mask types
• Combine multiple masks using blend modes
• Paint, clone, and blur with support for Wacom tablets
• Exchange masks with Photoshop