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Crop and Rasterize

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When applying transformations to a layer, the Source type used may or may not produce a pixelation effect:

  • Procedural elements such as a Circle Generator will be able to undergo major transformations, like a Skew or a huge Scale without showing any pixelation effect.

  • A layer using an image is based on a limited number of pixels. If the layer Scale is greater than 1.0, new pixels are interpolated using one of the available filters.

In both cases, if you apply several transformations in a row on a layer, either by using the Transform parameters or by adding Transform Modifiers, they will be concatenated in a single transformation in order to limit pixelation.

This is an example of how it’ll work if you use sub-compositions:

In a new Full-HD composition, add a Circle Generator with a default radius of 100.0 pixels.

Autograph calculates the pixels representing this white circle according to the composition format, storing 1920×1080 pixels for the whole comp.

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  • Create a new composition
  • Add the previous one as a sub-comp on a new layer.
  • Scale it to 5.0

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The circle appears blurred as Autograph rasterized the Compositon before scaling it. This is because the Crop and Rasterize parameter is turned On by default when a Composition is used as Layer Source.

Now turn Off the Crop and Rasterize parameter in order to see a much more defined circle.

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Rasterization and Composition Disk Caching

If Enable Disk Caching is enabled in Composition parameters , the Crop and Rasterize line will disappear. Its purpose is to keep an intermediate version with a finite-sized format in memory. This image is like a rasterized snapshot that will be used as a new Source.

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