Pixel_Encoder | Update v1.7

I love Pixel_Encoder. Always have, always will. And with the invention of recent Ai technologies, it's now possible to do some pretty wicked development tricks on my plugins. As such, I recently decided to do an absolutely massive overhaul/refactoring project across my entire lineup of tools, and the results are... well, they blew my mind.

I'll be releasing everything soon enough, but it only felt right to kick things off by taking another look at my eldest plugin child, Pixel_Encoder. With this update, I can officially say that my darling Pixel_Encoder boy has grown into a Pixel_Encoder man, thanks to a variety of new features that give you even more and better ways to dial in your results.

Keep reading, and I'll tell you all about the new ways you can control your images, such as Tone Detection, Shading Detail, Pattern Offset X/Y, and other UI improvements.

Tone Detection

There's a new Tone Detection dropdown in the Advanced section (also new!), which gives you five different ways to adjust how Pixel_Encoder interprets your source footage. These options are: Luminance (Rec.601), Average, Red Channel, Green Channel, and Blue Channel.

In most cases, switching between these various modes will provide slightly different versions of the same source image. It's a great way to "re-roll the dice" if you're not quite happy with what you're getting but don't want to make a major change to the vibe.

Previously, Pixel_Encoder defaulted to what is now the "Average" mode. Moving forward, it now defaults to using the Luminance mode, which I found gave better results on average.

Shading Detail

Shading Detail is a new slider (0–100%) that controls how many shading levels your current preset uses. Lowering this slider will slowly limit the number of patterns visible from your current pattern preset, starting at the brightest/top pattern.

In practice, I think this is mostly helpful for typography, texture, and background animations where you'd want to limit how many different types of glyphs are appearing at once. But, I'm sure there are plenty of other creative uses for it as well. So, you tell me!

P.S. A small secret about Pixel_Encoder is that it uses variable levels of shading depending on the pattern you select. Most patterns use 7 different pixel patterns, but High Detail actually uses 15 different levels of dithering to achieve the higher fidelity look.

Pattern Offset X/Y

Another helpful tool for motion design, Pattern Offset X/Y controls let you reposition the horizontal and vertical offset of the underlying pixel pattern. For those who like to pixel peep, this will give you far more precision for pixel-accurate alignments, which is nice.

It also lets you do some funky things by animating the offset value to create a scrolling effect in your pixel patterns. Here's a collage I whipped up where you can see that in action:

Invert Pattern & Randomize Pattern

Two smaller additions worth knowing about: you can now invert your patterns with a quick checkbox in the Advanced section. Sometimes with source footage, you'd set everything up only to realize it would look better if you inverted the image. Well, this saves you from having to look for and apply an extra effect to do that.

And, on a completely different wavelength, actually, the Randomize Pattern checkbox is a new addition to the Chaos section, which just gives even more zest when you need it. Will you ever actually need it? I don't know. But now you have it if you do.

UI Cleanup

As mentioned, there's a new Advanced section to house our new features, and, while I was at it, I made a few other tweaks to help make the UI a little more intuitive.

The old "Presets" dropdown is now called "Patterns" (because that's really what they are after all), and I moved the sizing controls up to be below the pattern selector since scaling the pattern is one of the first things you'd want to do when using Pixel_Encoder. 

Making it just a little bit easier to get things going and find something you like.

Get It

Pixel_encoder version 1.7 is a free update for existing Pixel_Encoder owners — download the latest version from your MEGAKRUNCH account. New to Pixel_Encoder? It's available on the MEGAKRUNCH store and aescripts.

Pixel_Encoder is compatible with After Effects and Premiere Pro on Mac and Windows.