MANUAL / PLUGIN

Palf KiraKira

One directional cap highlight on every isolated alpha shape.

Installation

01
Quit Adobe After Effects completely.
02
Copy KiraKira.aex (Windows) or KiraKira.plugin (macOS) into the After Effects Plug-ins folder.
03
Start After Effects and apply from Effect > Palf > Palf KiraKira. 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 the plug-in is blocked and will not load, run the following command in Terminal with the path for your install, then restart After Effects.

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

Caution (rejected-plug-in cache)

If a previous version failed to load once and the plug-in still does not appear after you replace the .plugin, After Effects on Mac may cache that rejected plug-in and keep refusing to load it. Holding Shift while launching After Effects clears the plug-in cache, and the plug-in may then load. Renaming or moving the preferences file before launch is also fine.

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

How to use

01
Apply Palf KiraKira to an alpha-bearing layer.
02
In Basic, set Sparkle Direction, Keep Away from Edge, Sparkle Length, Corner Roundness and Soft Glow.
03
Set Highlight Colour, Opacity, Blend Mode and Output.
04
Use Advanced for Transparency Threshold, Cut Tilt and Skip Tiny Bits.

Parameters

Controls: Basic / Advanced. Default: Basic.
Sparkle Direction: Cap direction. Default −45 degrees.
Keep Away from Edge: Distance from the silhouette. Default 6.
Sparkle Length: Cap depth. Default 28.
Cut Face Puff: Bowing of the cut face. Default 0.
Corner Roundness: Cap-corner fillet. Default 30.
Soft Glow: Edge softness. Default 0.
Highlight Colour: Highlight colour. Default white.
Opacity: Highlight opacity. Default 100%.
Blend Mode: Normal / Screen / Add / Overlay. Default: Screen.
Output: Composite / Highlight Only. Default: Composite.
Transparency Threshold: Threshold for separating shapes. Default 50%.
Cut Tilt: Cut-face angle. Default 0.
Skip Tiny Bits: Area used to exclude small shapes. Default 64.

Tips

Use Highlight Only when you want to composite the highlight separately. Transparency Threshold affects only shape separation, and the smoothness of continuous edges is kept. Raise Skip Tiny Bits to ignore small noise.

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 KiraKira DEMO” (KiraKira_DEMO.aex / KiraKira_DEMO.plugin) and can sit alongside the full plug-in.