Effects
Apply and configure After Effects effects and presets in plain language with Prism — native, editable controls, undoable in one step, with honest re-run handling.
Effects and presets are where After Effects gets its look — glows, blurs, color grades, distortions, stylized treatments. Prism lets you apply and configure them by describing what you want, in plain language, while the AI reads your live composition first and writes back the same native, editable effect controls you would have added by hand.
How it works
Prism follows the same read → reason → write loop it uses everywhere: the AI reads your active composition, plans the change, then writes the effect onto the correct layer with the parameter values you asked for. The result comes back as native effect controls, without leaving your AI client.
Applying effects in plain language
You name the result, not the menu path. Prism maps your intent to the appropriate effect and its parameters.
| You say | Prism applies |
|---|---|
| "Add a soft glow to the title, low intensity" | A glow on the title layer with editable radius and intensity |
| "Give the background a warm color grade" | A color-correction effect tuned toward warm tones |
| "Blur this layer, mostly horizontal" | A directional blur with the angle and amount set |
| "Add subtle film grain over everything" | A grain effect on the right layer with editable amount |
What you get back: the effect on the correct layer in the Effect Controls panel, with real, editable parameters you can adjust, keyframe, or remove.
Because the values are written as native effect properties, you can also keyframe them — animate a blur ramping in, a glow pulsing — with real keyframes or directly in the timeline.
Presets
Presets are reusable stacks of effects and settings. Prism can apply presets the same conversational way and then expose every resulting effect as an editable control, so a preset is a starting point you keep shaping — not a black box.
When an effect returns intermittently
Some effects and layer styles can occasionally come back empty inside After Effects even when the request was correct. Prism does not hide this: it flags the intermittent result and asks you to re-run once, which almost always succeeds. See troubleshooting for this and other AE quirks.
Notes and limits
- If an effect or preset involves type and the glyphs look off, that's a known After Effects text quirk — see troubleshooting.
- Your project files stay on your machine; only the specific action you request round-trips to the server — see how Prism works.
- If an effect lands on the wrong layer or the look is off, see troubleshooting.
Related
- Real keyframes, not scripts — animate an effect's parameters as editable keyframes.
- Expressions — when a procedural rule fits better than keyframes.
- The JSON pipeline — apply effects across a whole serialized project at once.
- Troubleshooting — intermittent results, text quirks, and connection issues.
Compositions
Create, nest, and switch After Effects compositions with Prism — set dimensions, fps, and duration in plain language, then scaffold whole scene structures with AI.
Expressions
How Prism writes working After Effects expressions — inertial bounce, wiggle, loops — while animation comes back as editable keyframes by default.