Backdrop
Background Blur and Glass Material sample the content behind the layer.
Available Non-destructive appearance
Effects that stay attached to the layer
Add shadows, glows, blur, glass, chromatic aberration, or glitch without flattening the source. Varve keeps the effect stack editable across vector shapes, paths, text, groups, frames, tables, image-filled objects, and raster layers.
One stack, honest order
Layer Effects execute through explicit stages: backdrop acquisition, content effects, appearance effects, then material highlights and final compositing. Move controls are stage-aware, so every enabled reorder changes a meaningful within-stage order; a control never pretends that a cross-stage move changes the renderer.
Content
Gaussian, Layer, Field, Iris, Tilt-Shift, Path, Spin, Depth Blur, Chromatic Aberration, and Glitch transform painted content.
Appearance
Shadows and glows wrap the authored source with stable, reorderable identity.
Current boundary: leaf layers run the full staged order. Flattened group and frame surfaces evaluate their appearance effects in authored order and support one Layer Blur per container; the Inspector disables cross-stage moves in both cases.
Coverage that follows the pixels
Text effects follow shaped glyphs, counters, decorations, and strokes—not the invisible text box. Raster and image effects follow true alpha, transparent holes, crop placement, sparse tiles, and background-removal masks, so a cut-out PNG does not receive a rectangular shadow. Compound vector paths preserve curves, fill rules, and authored holes; gradients, translucent fills, and stroke-only content use painted coverage when a geometric outline would be misleading.
Editable text
Keep the font, rich formatting, transforms, and text content editable while shadows and glows follow the glyphs.
Raster layers
Apply appearance effects to sparse tile surfaces without rerunning or replacing the original pixels.
Groups and frames
Apply one composited-child silhouette at the container owner, preserving child ownership, clipping, and transparent gaps.
Crafted for speed & precision: The Redesigned Effects Inspector
Tuning effects shouldn't mean guessing arbitrary numbers or fighting detached floating dialogs that hide your canvas artwork. Varve's redesigned inspector brings professional creative control directly into your flow:
One-step add
Choosing an effect from the categorized picker adds it immediately—no separate confirm click. Add again for another effect, or use a row's Duplicate action to repeat a tuned treatment.
Click the card to edit
Clicking an effect card opens its parameter editor; clicking again closes it. The labelled chevron stays the keyboard and screen-reader trigger, and interactive controls keep their own behaviour.
Every effect previewed
Each of the 16 effect types renders a live preview inside its popover—shadows, glows, every blur family, depth blur, chromatic aberration, glitch, and glass—so you are never editing blind.
Stage-aware reordering
Each row states its execution stage (Backdrop, Content, Appearance), and a disabled move explains that it is already first or last in that stage—no silent no-op reorders.
1-Click Elevation Presets
Instant modern elevation levels—from subtle 1px card borders (E1) and floating hover states (E2) to raised popovers (E3) and dramatic modal depth (E4), plus ambient glow and graphic hard shadows.
2D Light Direction Pad
Steer light angles visually with an interactive circular controller and instant compass snap points (Down, 45°, 135°, Center), keeping cartesian X/Y and polar angle/distance synchronized.
Zero-Friction In-Row Blur
Single-parameter effects like Layer Blur and Background Blur expose an inline radius scrubber directly on the card row. Tweak blur in one gesture without opening a popover.
Direct row actions
Move an effect up or down, or remove it, straight from its row. Reset and Duplicate stay in the row menu, and drag-to-reorder remains available for free positioning within a stage.
Controls that match the effect
Each effect has its own vocabulary instead of inheriting a one-size-fits-all panel. Tune the things that define the look, then keep the source editable.
Shadows and glows
Shadows expose X/Y plus synchronized angle and distance, elevation presets, and light pad. Glows add choke, contour, edge/center origin, and solid or effect-domain gradient colour treatment.
Shared control vocabulary
Colour and opacity sit on one row in every effect that supports them, opacity-like values read as percentages, blend mode is always the same control, and closed sets such as glow contour and origin are one-click segmented choices.
Accurate row swatches
A gradient glow shows its actual ramp in the row chip rather than a single stop, and glass exposes the edge highlight's colour, width, and opacity together.
Chromatic aberration
RGB split includes Mix and fractional offsets; Custom Color Split adds independent red, green, blue, luminance, or alpha contributions with output colours, strength, and offsets—previewed with those same colours.
Glitch
Direction, seed, density, slices, blocks, channel shifts, noise, scanlines, and blend mode.
Glass and depth
Tint, saturation, brightness, noise, edge highlight with opacity, focus range, falloff, and depth inversion.
Spatial blur family
Gaussian stays uniform; Field, Iris, Tilt-Shift, Path, and Spin expose their authored geometry and deterministic CPU reference rendering.
Categorized discovery
Organized into Shadows & Glows, Surface & Blur, Photographic Blur Gallery, and Stylistic Distortion for instant discovery.
Layer types at a glance
| Owner | Supported | Effect source |
|---|---|---|
| Shapes and paths | Yes | Vector fills and strokes |
| Text | Yes | Shaped glyph alpha |
| Image-filled vectors | Yes | Placed image alpha and masks |
| Raster layers | Yes | Tile surface alpha |
| Groups and frames | Yes | Composited child surface |
| Adjustment layers | Separate | Adjustment scope, not a drawable silhouette |
Everyday controls, without destructive surprises
- Add an effect by choosing it once, move it with the row chevrons or drag handle, remove it from the row, and reset or duplicate it from the row menu—all with one-step history. Depth Blur enters through its image workflow so an effect is never saved without a valid DepthMap.
- Stable effect IDs keep masks attached through reorder, reset, duplication, transfer, save, and reload.
- Positive and negative spread use alpha expansion/contraction; spread is not disguised extra blur.
- Transparent backgrounds, compound paths, vector holes, text counters, and sparse raster pixels remain transparent instead of receiving a bounding-box effect.
- Mixed selections show missing rows and match compatible effects by identity before legacy stage/type order; a mixed colour chip says "Mixed" rather than guessing one selection's colour.
- Copying a stack deep-clones effect parameters and mints independent IDs for each destination.
Blur Gallery vocabulary, with Varve semantics
Gaussian, Field, Iris, Tilt-Shift, Path, and Spin Blur are editable effect-stack entries rather than destructive filters. Their controls use owner-local geometry, source-pixel blur distances, stable control IDs, and a linear-light premultiplied CPU reference so a saved document keeps the same meaning across Canvas2D fallbacks and reopen.
Field pins, Iris regions, Tilt-Shift bands, Path points, and Spin pivots can be edited directly on the canvas or from the Inspector. The current CPU reference keeps the saved result deterministic; adaptive motion quality, bokeh, and restored grain remain deliberately scoped follow-ups.
Export with clear boundaries
The document stores the complete editable effect definition. When SVG, PDF, or another target cannot reproduce a backdrop, alpha, mask, blur, or procedural effect, Varve rasterizes the smallest affected compositing region rather than flattening the whole document. Vector geometry, text, and source assets remain editable in the document.
Browser Canvas2D is the current pixel authority for this effect family; native interchange preserves the contract even where a target backend uses software replay.