Advanced Radial Blur Lets RGB Wander

For those who don’t know the tool: Advanced Radial Blur is Mirza Beig’s free GPU-accelerated plug-in for Adobe After Effects. It combines radial/zoom blur, Gaussian blur and RGB separation to turn an image into adjustable streaks, softness and chromatic smear. Useful territory for stylised motion graphics, especially when the brief says “more energy” and has declined to elaborate.

Three passes walk into a comp

Some shots need a gentle optical nudge. Others need the colour channels to disagree publicly about where they are going. Advanced Radial Blur caters to the latter with a three-stage shader pipeline: radial/zoom blur first, Gaussian blur second, and RGB radial/zoom blur last. The order matters. The colour split receives the already blurred image, giving you successive stages to shape rather than one grand “make it dramatic” lever.

That makes the tool an interesting candidate for motion graphics and graphic transitions where a deliberate zoom smear is part of the design. Think of these as possible uses, not promises of a one-click camera simulation. Beig is offering direct control over an image-space effect; the art director still needs to turn up for work (Sorry!)

Give the commotion a centre

The interactive browser demo exposes separate masks for Radial Blur, Sample, Gaussian Blur and RGB Split, each with Remap Min, Remap Max and Power controls. Its Input and intermediate-pass views let you inspect what each stage contributes. That is a welcome way to find the guilty party when an initially tasteful treatment suddenly resembles a poster viewed through a departing train.

The supplied HTML implementation builds these masks from distance to an aspect-corrected centre. Min and Max set the transition range, while Power reshapes the falloff. Offset X and Y move the centre, so the effect need not worship the exact middle of the frame. In practical terms, the separate masks let you distribute softness, zoom streaks and colour separation differently across the image instead of inviting all three to occupy every pixel.

Quality, bias and other useful disagreements

Radial Blur Amount sets the extent of the effect, while Quality controls the number of samples. Radial Blur Power changes their spacing, and Bias shifts the sampling span along the line through the centre. Sample Power performs a separate radial remapping: at 1 it leaves that remapping neutral; higher values magnify the middle and squeeze the edges, with lower values reversing the relationship. These are distinct decisions about length, sampling and distortion. Turning up everything at once remains available, but should probably not be described as a methodology.

The RGB stage adds its own amount, quality and bias controls, plus an RGB/BGR order switch. Noise options include Off, interleaved-gradient noise and blue noise, with an animation toggle. In the shader code, noise jitters sample positions. It is part of the sampling machinery, rather than a decorative film-grain layer wearing a lab coat. More samples mean more sampling work; the useful quality setting is the one that survives inspection at your delivery resolution.

Chromatic misbehaviour, by design

The creative attraction is being able to steer the colour smear independently of the earlier blur. A restrained edge treatment and a full-throttle graphic transition can share the same basic machinery without requiring the same visual manners. The demo’s built-in chart makes the separation particularly easy to read: clean circles, fine lines and dots provide very little room for a wayward channel to hide.

For a different approach to optical character, DP’s coverage of Higx Optics and ZEISS LensCore examines tools built around ray-traced lens models. Advanced Radial Blur’s appeal is the directness of its shader controls. Choose according to the image you need, rather than assuming that everything labelled blur has attended the same school of optics.

Two files and a sensible first test

Installation needs plugin.aex and its accompanying index.html in the After Effects plug-ins folder. The repository also supplies an Install.cmd helper. After installation, the effect appears under Effect > Mirza Beig > Advanced Radial Blur. Keep the two required files together; the HTML is part of the tool, not a readme that accidentally dressed for a website.

Beig lists Windows 11 and After Effects 2025 as the tested configuration, with an OpenGL 3.3-capable GPU and driver plus Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime required. That is a tested setup, not confirmation of every newer host, another operating system or a render farm. DP inspected the browser demo and the supplied implementation, but has not run the AEX in After Effects. Before putting it into a delivery comp, check alpha edges, working colour space, bit depth and final-render behaviour on your own material. A cooperative browser tab is an encouraging introduction, not a production sign-off.

Free, including the colourful bits

Advanced Radial Blur is available from the developer’s repository for non-commercial and commercial projects. If you redistribute the AEX or HTML files, the README must accompany them. You can explore the controls in the browser before installing anything in After Effects. There is no need to commit a client’s logo to hyperspace merely to find out what the sliders do.