Comic Book

Color Dots prints four overlapping screens, cyan, magenta, yellow and black, each at its own angle, the way a real print does. The dots pick up the color of the picture. Mono Dots prints one black screen. Simpler, and the classic newspaper look.

Default Color Dots (Offset Comic) · Shows when Halftone Amount is above 0

Round is the classic dot. Square, Ellipse, Line, Cross, Rings and Stipple are the other six. Square, Ellipse, Line, Cross, Rings and Stipple print the same amount of ink for the same tone, so switching between them changes the texture, not how dark the picture is. Round sizes each dot from the pixel under it; the other six size from a small local average, which keeps them steadier. Ellipse is wider than it is tall (1.5 to 1). Rings are centered on the Animation Anchor. Stipple scatters each dot slightly off its grid point to break up patterns.

Default Round · Shows when Halftone Amount is above 0

Where in the tones the dots land. Full Range puts dots across every tone. Shadows & Highlights prints them in the dark and bright areas and leaves the midtones clean, which keeps faces and big flat areas calmer. The dots fade in from middle gray: none at 50% brightness, full strength at 15% and below and at 85% and above. A color of middle brightness, such as an olive green or a skin tone, gets few dots, so switch to Full Range if an area looks bare.

Default Shadows & Highlights (Offset Comic) · Shows when Halftone Amount is above 0

How big the dots are. Higher means bigger and fewer. It sets how many dots fit up the height of the frame: about 120 at 0 and about 20 at 100, and it scales with the frame, so a 4K picture shows the same dots as a 1080 one.

Default 40 (about 80 dots up the frame) · Shows when Halftone Amount is above 0

Whether dot size follows brightness. At 0 each dot is sized by the brightness under it: big dots in the dark, small in the light. At 100 every dot is the same size.

Default 20 (Offset Comic) · Shows when Halftone Amount is above 0

The darkest brightness that counts as the subject. Everything from Low to High is the subject, with a soft edge just outside the band. If you set Low above High, Comic Book swaps them for you.

Default 0 · Shows for Luminance Range

The brightest brightness that counts. With Low at 0 and High at 100, everything is the subject, which is where it starts. Pull Low up to pick out the bright parts, or High down to pick out the dark parts.

Default 100 · Shows for Luminance Range

The color to key on. Anything close to it counts as the subject. It starts as a skin tone, because the usual job is a face or a hand. Pick the color from the swatch. The key compares your original footage, not the styled picture in the viewer, so a color you pick off the screen can differ slightly from the color in the source.

Default A skin tone · Shows for Color Key

How far from the Key Color a color may be and still count, with a soft edge just outside. Low is strict, high lets in neighbors.

Default 50 · Shows for Color Key

Softens the subject's edge. At 0 it is the source's own edge. At 100 the edge becomes a wide soft ramp that reaches about 24 pixels to each side of the edge at 1080, scaling with the frame. A softer edge hides a rough outline.

Default 10 · Shows when Subject is not Off and Subject Dots or Subject Ink has been moved off its default

Swaps the subject and the background. Whatever was the subject is now the background, and the rest of the picture is the subject. With Luminance Range or Color Key, clear (fully transparent) areas of the clip are never picked, so Invert turns them into subject.

Default Off · Shows when Subject is not Off and Subject Dots or Subject Ink has been moved off its default

How much of the dots and the hatching the subject keeps. 100 is as much as everywhere else. 0 is none, a clean subject. It only reduces. It cannot add dots. With Halftone Amount at 0 and Shadow Hatching Off there is nothing to remove, so the row hides.

Default 100 · Shows when Subject is not Off and the dots or Shadow Hatching are on

How much of the ink the subject keeps: both the edge lines and Spot Black. 100 is as much as everywhere else, 0 is none. Like Subject Dots, it only reduces.

Default 100 · Shows when Subject is not Off

How fast the animation runs. 50 is normal speed, 100 is double, and 0 is still. One exception: Boil never fully stops. At speed 0 it still jumps 8 times a second, and at 100 it jumps 40 times a second. To freeze the dots, set Dot Animation to Off.

Default 50 · Shows when Dot Animation is anything but Off

A point in the frame. Drift scrolls the dots in its direction from the middle of the frame (to the right when it is centered; Rings grow outward from it instead), and Rotate and Pulse pivot around it. Rings (a Dot Shape) are centered on it too, whatever the Dot Animation. The row only shows for Drift, Rotate and Pulse, but its value is kept: to place the Rings, switch Dot Animation to one of those three, set the point, then switch it back to Off. The Rings stay where you put them. Set it with its X and Y values.

Default The center of the frame · Shows for Drift, Rotate or Pulse

Off: the look fills the frame edge to edge. On: the styled picture is set on a printed comic page, with paper, a border, and a page background of its own. The page is opaque, so it covers whatever is behind the clip. Turning Frame on reveals the four rows below.

Default Off · Group Frame Options

The kind of page. Classic: cream paper, a medium black border. Vintage: aged sepia paper, a brown border, a ragged torn edge, and the picture toned sepia. Manga B&W: a white page with a thin border and a dense screentone behind the picture, which itself turns black and white with extra contrast. Bold / Pop: a white page with a thick black border and richer, punchier color. The page's color treatment applies to the footage on it, not just the paper.

Default Classic · Shows when Frame is On · picking one sets Frame Color and Border Width

The color of the page border. Choosing a Frame Style sets it (black for Classic, Manga B&W and Bold / Pop, a dark brown for Vintage), so pick the Frame Style first and change the color after.

Default Black · Shows when Frame is On

How big your footage sits on the page, scaled down evenly from the center. At 100 it fills the frame and the border sits right on its outer edge. Lower, and more page shows around it.

Default 90 · Shows when Frame is On

How thick the border is. It is drawn on the inside edge of the footage, so changing it never resizes the picture. At 0 you still get a hairline.

Default 40 · Shows when Frame is On · picking a Frame Style sets it

Shows or hides the rows beneath it. It changes no look by itself.

Default Off

Softens the picture before anything is drawn on it. Higher makes flatter areas and fewer stray lines. Lower keeps fine detail and every speck of texture.

Default 50 (Offset Comic)

How thick the ink lines are. Higher is a heavier, bolder pen. It drives both Line Styles.

Default 55 (Offset Comic)

How much of the picture gets inked. Higher inks more of the frame and goes darker. Lower inks only the strongest edges. It drives both Line Styles.

Default 45 (Offset Comic)

Classic runs the ink after the dots, so it outlines the dots as well as the shapes, and it floods the darker tones with ink. Designed draws the line from the clean colors instead: no dot outlines, no flood, and a flat area gets no ink at all. A Designed line follows how strong the edge is, so strong edges draw heavy and weak ones draw light. See both side by side in Up close.

Default Classic (every Style) · Shows with Advanced

For Designed lines. How gradually the weight follows the edge strength. Low: most edges ink at full weight. High: weak edges stay faint, so the line breathes with the picture.

Default 50 · Shows with Advanced and Line Style on Designed

For Designed lines. How weak an edge can be and still start a line, which is what shapes the thin tails where a line fades out. Classic ignores it.

Default 50 · Shows with Advanced and Line Style on Designed

Pushes the picture away from mid-gray, before it is flattened into bands. 100 is neutral, below 100 is flatter, above is harder.

Default 125 (Offset Comic)

Rescues crushed shadows. It lifts the dark and mid tones before the picture is flattened, so near-black detail spreads over more bands instead of collapsing into one flat black.

Default 0 (every Style)

How many flat steps the brightness is cut into. A setting of N gives N + 1 tones between black and full brightness. Fewer is flatter and more graphic. More is smoother. It works on brightness only, so the hues are kept: it is not a count of colors.

Default 5 (Offset Comic)

Softens the step from one band to the next. At 0 the bands are hard. Higher gives wider, softer band edges, which stops a flat tone that noise nudges back and forth from popping between two bands.

Default 0 (every Style)

How dark the hatch lines ink. At 0 no hatch lines are drawn at all.

Default 60 · Shows with Advanced and Shadow Hatching on

The spacing of the hatch lines. Higher means fewer, wider-spaced lines: from about 110 lines up the frame at 0 to about 30 at 100.

Default 50 · Shows with Advanced and Shadow Hatching on

The direction of the hatch lines. Cross-Hatch's second layer sits 60 degrees from this one.

Default 45 · Shows with Advanced and Shadow Hatching on

Solid black ink in the very deepest tones, the filled-in blacks of an inked comic, as a control of its own. At 0 there are none. The Subject Ink slider scales it too.

Default 0 (every Style) · Shows with Advanced

Saturation. 100 leaves the color as it is, 0 is black and white, and 200 doubles it.

Default 150 (Offset Comic)

Cools or warms the finished picture. 0 is neutral. Positive pushes warm, toward sepia. Negative pushes cool and blue.

Default 5 (Offset Comic)

The off-register print error: the red and blue channels slide apart sideways, leaving a colored fringe on edges, like a plate that did not line up. Its size scales with the frame, so a 4K picture shows the same fringe as 1080.

Default 55 (Offset Comic)

A fine, aged-paper grain over the finished picture, plus a coarser layer that stays visible when the picture is small and takes over around the middle of the slider. It works with Frame on or off. With Frame on, the grain sits on the footage only: the page paper and border around it get none, because the page has its own look from Frame Style. The grain is locked to the picture, so it does not crawl as things move, and Intensity scales it along with everything else.

Default 20 (Offset Comic)

On Twos holds each picture for 2 frames of your project, On Threes for 3, On Fours for 4. In a 24 fps project, twos is 12 pictures a second, whatever frame rate the source file has.

Counting starts at the first frame of the clip Comic Book sits on, so the groups line up from the clip's start. Cut that clip in two with the blade and the second piece starts its own count at its own first frame. Outside the clip nothing is held.

Which picture is held depends only on the time being drawn and on the clip's timing, not on what was drawn before it. A held picture is never later than the playhead.

A transition on a clip extends the stretch of footage the effect sees by the transition's length. Final Cut Pro counts the groups from that earlier start, so a clip with a transition can fall into different groups than the same clip without one, along the whole clip and not only near the transition.

If the source frame rate differs from the project's, for example a 23.976 clip in a 29.97 project, the held groups take turns stepping one and two source frames. The hold looks very slightly uneven. That is the two frame rates beating against each other, not Comic Book.

Effects you stacked before Comic Book are held with the picture. The dot animation steps with the picture, so a held frame shows the dots held too. During the trial, the TRIAL flash stays on real time.

With Stability above 0, each frame is blended with the two frames before it (the two previous held frames when Frame Hold is on) before the look is drawn. That calms the flicker in the bands and the lines that video noise causes. A pixel that moved keeps its own value, so there is far less ghost trail behind motion.

The Intensity blend and Preserve Luminance still use the original frame, never the blended one. So Stability steadies the shading, the dots and the lines, and the original underneath stays sharp.

Higher counts more change as noise, which is steadier, but slow motion can start to smear. Raise it a little at a time until the flicker settles, then stop.

Above 0 the effect asks Final Cut or Motion for two extra frames per frame, so live playback is heavier. At 0 it costs nothing. If playback stutters, render the shot (see Tips and limits).

Picking a source only decides which part of the picture is the subject. The look stays as it was until you treat the subject differently: lower Subject Dots or Subject Ink. Feather and Invert only reshape the selection, so they stay hidden until one of those two has been moved. Subject Dots only counts while Halftone Amount is above 0 or Shadow Hatching is on; with neither there are no dots to remove.

A bare area is usually a Halftone setting, not the Subject. Halftone Amount at 0 prints no dots anywhere. Halftone Coverage on Shadows & Highlights keeps the dots off colors of middle brightness, so a green or a skin tone can look bare while the bright and dark areas are dotted; Full Range puts them back. The Subject only takes dots away, and only when Subject Dots is below 100. At 100 it leaves the dots as they were.

Subject Dots and Subject Ink reduce what the subject receives: 100 is as much as the background, 0 is none. Neither can add dots or ink the effect would not otherwise draw.

They read the picture as it arrives at Comic Book, before the look is drawn and before Stability. With Frame Hold on, that is the held frame. So changing Contrast or Shading Levels never moves what they pick out.

With Luminance Range or Color Key, a fully transparent pixel is never picked. Ticking Invert turns those pixels into subject.

On a frame where detection finds nobody, Comic Book renders exactly as if Subject were Off: full dots and ink everywhere. Invert switches off with it. When a person walks out of shot the look can change at that frame. Frames under 100 pixels on the short side skip detection altogether.

People and Faces run the Mac's built-in detection as every frame renders, so they add work to playback, scrubbing and export. Luminance Range and Color Key are cheap.

Choosing a Style rewrites the halftone controls, Dot Shape, Shadow Hatching and all of Advanced Options. If you tweak first and pick a Style after, your tweaks are gone. Pick the Style first.

Choosing a Frame Style sets Frame Color and Border Width. Set the Frame Style first, then change either one. Source Width is yours, and no Frame Style changes it.

Classic ink runs after the dots, so it outlines them. If you want clean lines with dots behind them, switch to Designed or turn Halftone Amount down.

Preserve Luminance rescales the styled picture toward your original brightness first. Intensity then blends the result against your original.

With Frame Hold on, the dot animation steps with the held picture, and Stability blends the held pictures. Turn Frame Hold on first and you will see the dots and the shading move together.

Subject Ink scales both the edge lines and Spot Black. Subject Dots scales both the dots and the hatching.

With no dots, the dot rows tuck away. If a row you expect is missing, check Halftone Amount first.

A grid layout is named by its rows, top to bottom, and each number is the panels in that row. 2-2-2 is three rows of two panels. 1-2-2 is one wide panel on top and two rows of two under it. 1 is one panel filling the page. There are 13 grids, and each page picks its own. A panel's well number follows its place: the first row is wells 1 and 2, the second row 3 and 4, the third row 5 and 6, and a row with one panel uses the first well of its row. So changing a layout never moves a clip to a different panel.

Default 2-2-2 on both pages

Cover is well 1 over the whole page, edge to edge with no margin, because a cover with a margin does not look right when the page turns. Empty is no panel and no paper: a clear page that shows whatever is below it. A front cover is Left Empty with Right Cover. A back cover is Left Cover with Right Empty.

A layout with fewer panels hides the extra ones, but their wells stay in the inspector, because a generator cannot hide a well. A hidden well keeps its clip and its framing, and both are back when you choose a layout that shows that panel again. Pointing Zoom Panel at a hidden panel does nothing.

Comic Book Vertical is one page, so it has one Layout row and the wells Panel 1 to Panel 6. It has the same grids and Cover, but no Empty. It suits portrait clips: a landscape clip shows only its middle slice.

Zoom 0 fills the panel with the clip, so whatever does not fit the panel's shape is cut off: a 16:9 clip loses its sides in a 2-2-2 panel, and a Cover shows only the middle of it. Zoom 100 goes in four times closer. Pan X and Pan Y slide the picture inside the panel.

Default Zoom 0, Pan 0

A panel shows as much of its clip as fits. Where the clip already fills the panel, there is no room to pan that way, so the picture slides over and the paper shows at one edge. Zoom in first, and there is room. On the vertical page this is the sideways direction: a landscape clip has no sideways room at Zoom 0, and neither does a 9:16 clip in a panel wider than 9:16. Pan X shows the paper at once there, until you zoom in.

A clip that is shorter than the generator stops before the generator ends. Lengthen the clip, or shorten the generator. A compound clip with text loses its text when it ends (see Text on the page).

A freeze frame or a still image in a well holds the panel still, and Zoom and Pan still work on it. A one-frame range in the browser does not freeze a well: it brings in the whole clip.

A well plays its clip as it comes. To use a retimed clip, select it, choose File ▸ New ▸ Compound Clip (Option-G), and put the compound clip in the well.

The generator has no Frame Hold, because a well hands over only the current frame. To hold a panel on twos, threes or fours, put the hold on the clip first: make a compound clip, add the Comic Book effect inside it with Frame Hold on, and put the compound clip in the well. A clip exported with the hold already in it works too. Set the generator's Intensity to 0 so the generator does not draw its look over the held one a second time. Twelve compound clips with an effect each can be slow to play live, depending on your Mac. Rendering them first can help: select them and choose Modify ▸ Render Selection (Control-R).

Zoom Panel picks a panel, or Off. Zoom Amount takes that panel from 0, where it sits in its place on the page, to 100, where it fills the whole frame in front of everything else. In between it grows smoothly, so move Zoom Amount over time to push into a panel. The look is drawn after the zoom, so a zoomed panel wears the same Style as the rest.

Default Zoom Panel Off, Zoom Amount 0

Final Cut Pro cannot keyframe a popup, so Zoom Panel does not animate. Change it at any time, even partway through a zoom, and the zoom switches to the new panel at once. For a smooth hand-off from one panel to another, bring Zoom Amount back to 0, change the panel, then zoom in again.

Paper Color colors the sheet behind the panels. Paper Texture adds an aged-paper texture to it, and at 0 the paper is clean. Both cover both pages, margins and the gaps between panels included, and neither touches the panels.

Panel Grain is the grain on the panels themselves. It is the effect's Paper Texture under another name, so it adds the same fine grain and coarser layer, and it never reaches the paper.

The generator applies Comic Book once, to all the panels together, not once per panel. That keeps rendering cheaper and lets the dots run on unbroken from panel to panel. The look never reaches the paper. Because it is one look, Rings are centered on the Animation Anchor across the whole spread, and Drift on Rings grows them outward from it. Subject sees the spread as one picture.

The generator has the effect's look controls: Style, Intensity, Preserve Luminance, the dots, Subject, Dot Animation, Stability and Advanced Options. It has no Frame, since the page is the frame, and no Frame Hold (see above).

The generator has no text of its own. A title on a lane above it sits on top of the dots instead of under them, and no panel scales it down, so at the same size it reads more clearly than text inside a well. It does not turn with the page: for text that has to be part of a page turn, put it in a well.

Make the compound clip as long as the generator. The text disappears when the compound clip ends: a 2-second compound clip in a 5-second generator loses its text after 2 seconds. To put words in one panel, make a compound clip with a title over a solid color and put the compound clip in the well. Use this when the text has to be part of a page turn: it turns with the page. The solid is needed: plain black text does not show in a well, so put a white solid under it. Any color works. The well's thumbnail in the inspector shows the title, not the solid under it; the panel still shows both.

A well fills its panel, so the edges of the compound clip are cut off wherever the panel is not 16:9: keep the lettering toward the middle. In most layouts a panel is smaller than the frame, so the clip is scaled down to fit and the lettering shrinks with it.

With Intensity above 0 the comic look is drawn over the lettering too, like the rest of the spread. When the dots are on, the lettering needs to be bigger: the dots can swamp small or thin type. Use large, bold type, and give it a large panel: a Cover fills the whole page and is the biggest. How big is big enough depends on the typeface and on how large the picture plays, so judge it at the size your audience will watch. Some Styles leave lettering easier to read than others, so try a few. Intensity belongs to the whole spread, so setting it to 0 to keep the lettering clean also takes the look off the other panels.

Comic Page Turn lifts the free corner of the right page, carries it across the spine and lands it flat on the left page. The next spread shows underneath it and through the back of the page. Comic Page Turn Vertical is for single pages: the page lifts at its bottom right corner and sweeps off past the left edge of the frame, hinged on that edge. There is no page for it to land on. Use the turn that matches your project.

A turn dropped on a cut takes Final Cut Pro's default transition length, which you set in Final Cut Pro ▸ Settings ▸ Editing. It fits any length you drag it to. A turn under 10 frames still works, but we suggest 10 frames or more, so the page is on screen long enough to read as a turn. On a long turn the page lands a little before the end, so the last moments show only the next clip.

The turn has no controls of its own. The margin and curl of the turning page take the paper color of the page that is leaving, and fade out toward the end. The picture on the back of the page is the next clip. A plain clip under a turn works too: the turn reads its paper color from the clip's own edges, and a clear picture gives white paper.

A front cover has nothing on its left side, so that side is see-through: it shows whatever is on the lanes below until the cover lands. Put a clip there on purpose, or keep that lane clear. The vertical turn has no left page, so it has no see-through side.

Played live and unrendered, a turn can stutter. Select the clips on either side of it and choose Modify ▸ Render Selection (Control-R), and it plays smoothly. A turn that stutters live does not stutter in the export.

A clip whose frame rate differs from your project's repeats a frame now and then. A 25 fps clip in a 30 fps project repeats one frame in six. It shows most at the start of a turn, where the page moves slowest. The repeats belong to the clip, not the turn, and the turn itself stays smooth in the export.

A turn between two spreads is heavy to play, and whatever sits under it adds to the load. A third Comic Book clip stacked under a turn between two spreads drops frames. Keep what sits under a turn light, and render.

Playback can slow down depending on your settings, your Mac and what you add. Keyframing with all 12 wells filled can be slow.

H.264 clips in the wells can stutter even with only six wells filled. Twelve ProRes wells played in real time on an Apple M3 Mac, and so did optimized media. To make optimized media, select the clips in the browser, choose File ▸ Transcode Media, tick Create optimized media and click OK. Then click the View pop-up menu in the upper-right corner of the viewer and choose Optimized/Original under Media Playback.