MANUAL / PLUGIN

Palf Gingham

A woven gingham overlay with independent warp, weft and crossings.

Installation

01
Quit Adobe After Effects completely.
02
Copy Gingham.aex (Windows) or Gingham.plugin (macOS) into the After Effects Plug-ins folder.
03
Start After Effects and apply from Effect > Palf > Palf Gingham. If After Effects was already running, restart it so the plug-in loads.

Windows: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects <version>\Support Files\Plug-ins\
macOS: /Applications/Adobe After Effects <version>/Plug-ins/

Requirements: After Effects 2023–2026 / Windows / macOS 11.0 (Big Sur) or later.

Caution (macOS)

If macOS blocks the plug-in and it will not load, run the following command in Terminal (enter the path for your install), then restart After Effects.

sudo xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/Adobe After Effects <version>/Plug-ins/Gingham.plugin"

Caution (rejected-plug-in cache)

If a previous version failed to load once, After Effects on Mac may keep rejecting the plug-in from cache even after you replace the .plugin file. Hold Shift while launching After Effects to clear the plug-in cache; it may then load. Moving or renaming the preferences file aside before launch is fine too.

~/Library/Preferences/com.Adobe.After Effects.<version>.plist

Parameters

Check Size: Woven grid scale. Default 96.
Aspect: Vertical-to-horizontal check aspect. Default 100%.
Centre: Grid origin. Default 50%, 50%.
Angle: Grid rotation. Default 0 degrees.
Phase: 360 degrees advances one check. Default 0 degrees.
Ground Colour: Base colour of the weave.
Warp Colour: Warp yarn colour.
Weft Colour: Weft yarn colour.
Warp Opacity: Warp coverage. Default 55%.
Weft Opacity: Weft coverage. Default 55%.
Yarn Opacity: Combined pattern opacity. Default 100%.
Yarn Blend Mode: Colour at Translucent crossings: Normal, Screen, Add, Multiply or Overlay. Default: Multiply.
Yarn Overlap: Translucent or Diagonal Cut. Default: Diagonal Cut.
Diagonal Angle: Diagonal-cut hatch angle. Default 45 degrees.
Diagonal Pitch: Diagonal-cut hatch spacing. Default 8 pixels.
Diagonal Fill: Diagonal-cut hatch fill. Default 50%.
Source Blend Mode: Over, Multiply, Screen or Add. Default: Over.

Tips

Use Translucent for conventional colour-blended crossings, and Diagonal Cut to keep alternating yarn colours. Phase loops exactly after 360 degrees. Over uses straight alpha-over, so semitransparent source edges remain clean.

DEMO edition

The free DEMO offers the same controls as the full edition, with a red cross watermark on every output frame. The effect appears as “Palf Gingham DEMO” (Gingham_DEMO.aex / Gingham_DEMO.plugin) and can sit alongside the full plug-in.