Holy heck! BGRA Entertainment who have previously brought us the L4tt3rM4pp3r textmode and ASCII art video mapping plugin for After Effects has recently released Retro Dither. A GPU accelerated plugging for After Effects which will allow you to “retro-ize” any Ae project. Retro Dither will allow you to imitate the style and color of old video game consoles. With its varied dithering algorithms and color pallets, Retro Dither has preset looks of classic hardware such as the ZX spectrum, CGA, MSX and many more.
Retro Dither Features
- 20 different color palettes including C-64 and Apple II
- Adaptive color palettes work pretty similar to the ones in e.g. Adobe Photoshop “Save for Web” dialog , while named after hardware ones (CGA, ZX Spectrum, C64 etc.) are mimicking actual ancient hardware limitations.
- 12 different dithering methods
- RetroDither is generally capable of two types of dithering: error diffusion (including FloydSteinberg, JarvisJudice, Stucki, Atkinson, Burkes, Siera, StevensonArce algorithms) and ordered dithering using Bayer matrix.
- 0 to 8x downscaling
- Performs image downscaling for more stylized look.
- Threshold slider
- Is available to alter Bayer dithering algorithms, and also to manage 1bit color palette mapping.
- Grayscale
- Performs additional grayscale conversion of the input. Note that color palette is applied after this operation, which means you won’t necessary have grayscale image on the output of the effect; instead, RetroDither will map shades of gray to colors of output palette, which might give you quite interesting results.
- Seprentine scan
- Alters all error diffusion based (nonBayer) dithering algorithms, producing slightly different result (see the description).
- Fully GPU Accelerated!
Availability and Pricing
Retro Dither looks to be a great addition to the bag of After Effects stylized looks, using smart dithering and color schemes to easily re-create any retro computer look. The plugin can be purchased through aescripts + aeplugins for $49.99. Check out Retro Dither plugin for After Effects here.