The Photism manual

1. THE TWO WINDOWS

Photism draws in two windows, and they stay in sync.

The main window

The plugin window in your DAW, or the app's window. Panel, scene names in the corner, keyboard shortcuts, image drops. This is where you tune.

The output window

Shift+O in the plugin, O in the app. Visuals only. No menu, no overlays, no cursor after two seconds. This is the one you send to a projector or a capture card, or feed to Syphon or Spout (section 16).

Tune in the main window, put the output window on the second screen, and drive both from one place. Photism Online opens its output as a second browser page the same way.

2. KEYBOARD REFERENCE

Everything plays from the keyboard in the main window. In the plugin, hold shift with each key (section 22).

G

Open or close the tuning panel. Start here. The g · tune button in the corner strip does the same.

Tab

Open the scene grid: every scene on one card. Click a name to jump. Tab again or Esc closes it. The tab · scenes button in the corner strip opens it too, and the card carries a g · tune panel button.

1 to 9, 0

Jump straight to the first ten scenes. 0 is the tenth. Sand, idol, oracle, anemone, forge, ingot, spacetime, pelt, wisp, grove, descent, visage, chorus, limitless 3d, vesica, locus, crystal, and pearl sit past 0, a Tab or arrow away.

Left / Right

Step to the previous or next scene. The small arrows beside the scene name in the corner strip do the same.

P

Open the palette card: every palette with its five colors, grouped under headers you can fold. Click a palette to switch, click a header to fold or unfold its group, P again or Esc closes. The p · button in the corner strip does the same.

Shift+Space

Let go of the mouse. Scenes that follow the cursor (anemone, wisp, grove, visage, chorus, limitless 3d) freeze their chase and ease home, and pelt stops reading the brush; press Shift+Space again to take the mouse back. Hovering the tuning panel or any button never steers a scene, with or without Shift+Space. Visage keeps its saved head angle when you detach the mouse.

Space

In Visage, switch eye tracking off or on. Off brings the eyes forward; blinking and the other animation continue. The scene panel shows eyes follow cursor, and presets save the choice. In other scenes, Photism Online and the standalone app use Space to play and pause a loaded track. Use the player's play button during Visage.

X

Shuffle: a fresh scene and palette in one press. The scene always changes, the palette draws from the full set, and your macro settings stay put. The x · shuffle button in the corner strip and on the scene grid do the same.

N

Roll the scene dice: a fresh mode and fresh dials for the scene you are on. The picture, palette, and macros stay. Same as the randomize scene button.

L

Roll the look dice: fresh macros and palette, the scene stays. Same as the randomize look button.

B

Swap back to the look before the last change. Press it again to bounce between the two: an A/B for looks. Follows the preset morph time, so with a morph set the swap glides.

O

Open the projector output window directly, no address to type. Drag it to the projector and press F there.

A

Cycle the frame: full, 16:9, 9:16, 1:1.

F

Fullscreen, in the app, in Photism Online and in the output window. Double-click the output window for the same, and Esc leaves fullscreen. In the plugin, open the output window (Shift+O), drag it to the second screen, then double-click it or press F there.

R

Start or stop recording a clip.

S

Save a full-resolution still (PNG).

D

Toggle the debug overlay: the frame rate, the render size as a percent, the audio bands and the exposure. Handy when you want to see what the engine hears.

The output window ignores G, Tab, P, X, B, O, and D on purpose, so a projector never shows a panel, a card, or an overlay.

3. THE TUNING PANEL

Press G. The panel holds everything that is not on the keyboard, in the order you tend to reach for it:

• The five big edits (react, chaos, trails, heat, bright).
• Palette and look controls, closing with randomize look. It rolls the macros and palette on every click and keeps brightness up; symmetry, tiles, and twist reframe about one click in three. Your photo and the scene stay put.
• The active scene's own sliders, closing with randomize scene. It rolls the scene's mode and settings and leaves the rest of the panel alone, so the picture you dropped in rides straight through.
• Reset. After either randomize, an undo randomize button appears under it and brings the look you had straight back.
• The preset browser.
• The image drop.

The top of the panel names the scene and its mode, and under it the preset you loaded. Move anything after loading a preset and the line adds "modified" and three buttons. UPDATE saves the look over your preset. SAVE COPY keeps it as a new preset with a number on the end. REVERT puts the preset back exactly as it was saved. The presets that ship with Photism are read-only, so they offer SAVE COPY and REVERT. The line stays in view while you scroll.

Click the panel's title row to fold the tune rows away and save room; the scene line, the scene section, action buttons, and folders stay put. Click it again to bring the rows back.

One rule of tuning: move one slider at a time and watch. Every control does something visible. Sliders sweep hard, roughly a quarter to four times the center value, so the ends reshape the whole look. Double-click any slider to reset it to its default. If a control does nothing visible, that is a bug, tell us.

4. THE FIVE BIG EDITS

These are the macros, the controls you automate most. In the plugin each is a host parameter you draw from the arrangement (section 17); in the app, a lane over the track (section 22).

REACT

How hard the music moves the picture. This is the master sensitivity over every audio-to-visual mapping. Low and the scene drifts on its own; high and every hit lands hard. REACT does not touch the signal scene's meters, which measure rather than react.

CHAOS

Turbulence, feedback tunnels, and how far the image tears and folds. Center is the tuned default for each scene; up pushes toward the wild end.

TRAILS

Feedback persistence. Low wipes clean each frame; high smears motion into long comet tails and tunnels.

HEAT

Bloom and flash. The glow that kicks push through the structure. Up for a hotter, brighter response to energy.

BRIGHTNESS

Exposure. The engine already auto-exposes to keep the picture from clipping or going muddy; BRIGHTNESS is your offset on top of that, roughly 0.6x to 2.4x. A photo or video on limitless skips the auto-exposure and shows exactly as the file at the default BRIGHTNESS. Turn it up to lift the picture's midtones or down to sink them. Its whites stay white and never clip.

DECAY

How long a hit holds before the picture settles. Center is the stock feel. Turn it down for fast, full music so the picture clears between hits instead of staying lit; turn it up and every hit lingers. It sits right under the five on the panel, and presets remember it.

5. INPUT GAIN

INPUT GAIN

Source calibration. If your track runs hot or quiet, set this so the visuals respond in a good range. Center is unity. Watch the debug overlay (D) if you want numbers while you set it.

INPUT EQ

Which part of the sound the visuals react to. Click the row and a spectrum opens beside the panel. Drag across it to pick a range, drag the lit window to move it, drag an edge to resize it, and double-click to go back to the full mix. Narrow it over the kick and the frame pulses with the kick alone, or over the highs to follow the hats. A narrow window still drives the visuals as hard as the full mix. In the plugin, Input EQ is a parameter you can automate: the lane slides the window along the spectrum and keeps the width you set. Like INPUT GAIN it belongs to your source, so presets leave it alone.

6. SHAPE THE FRAME: SYMMETRY, TILES, TWIST, SLICE

Four global transforms that run over whatever the scene draws. They are independent of each other, so you can stack them.

SYMMETRY

Kaleidoscope. 0 is off, 1 is a bilateral mirror, 2 is quad, and higher values open radial kaleidoscope segments, up to twelve.

TILES

A wallpaper grid that repeats the frame. 0 is off.

TWIST

A radial vortex that swirls the frame around its center. Center is off; go either side for the two directions.

SLICE

Shear slabs that shift horizontal bands against each other. 0 is off.

SYMMETRY, TWIST and a few others persist when you change scenes, so an envelope you drew keeps playing over the new scene. Touch the slider in the panel and the scene's own curated default takes back over.

7. THE LENS

An optical material laid over the whole picture, like glass held in front of the lens.

LENS

How strong the optical material is. 0 is off, so the picture is untouched.

LENS STYLE

Which material, 1 through 7: 1 glass ribs, 2 glass fan, 3 anamorphic, 4 melt, 5 glitch, 6 pixels, 7 fly eye.

Set LENS above zero, then flip LENS STYLE to audition the seven looks. At LENS 0 the LENS STYLE row stays in the panel, dimmed, so you can pick the material first and bring LENS up on the beat. Anamorphic is cinema glass: the frame breathes a widescreen squeeze, kicks rack it, and bright spots throw streak flares. Melt liquefies the picture into slow wax drips, and kicks send heat plumes up through it. Fly eye is a honeycomb of little glass beads; LENS sweeps the bead size, kicks turn the whole lattice a notch.

8. DRIFT AND EDGES: SPIN, HUE DRIFT, VIGNETTE

SPIN

Slow rotation drift of the whole frame. Center is off; either side spins one way or the other. Spin turns the kaleidoscope, so its row only shows while SYMMETRY is on. The parameter and its automation lane keep working while the row is hidden.

HUE DRIFT

Slowly walks the palette over time. 0 holds the palette steady.

VIGNETTE

Darkens the edges to focus the eye on the center. 0 is a flat frame.

9. SCENE, PALETTE, MODE, PRESET

These four pick by name, not by amount. Click one and choose from the list, which gets you through a long set fast. Each is still an automatable parameter, so a lane records and replays your choice.

SCENE

Which visual engine is running, by name. Same as the number keys, or clicking a name in the corner.

PALETTE

Which of the twenty-four color sets is active. The P key opens the same list as a card in the visuals window.

MODE

The active scene's variant. Seven scenes use it: limitless has twenty-one modes, vesica has seven figures, limitless 3d has six, signal has five, anemone has four patterns, spacetime has two directions, and descent has multicolor and tonal. Other scenes show no modes, so MODE does nothing for them.

PRESET

Swap a whole saved look on a song section. Pin a preset to a slot with the # chip in the panel's preset browser, then the PRESET dropdown lists your pinned presets by name (up to 128 slots). The slot stays put when you save or delete other presets. The "none" item is manual control, so loading the set never stomps a live session.

10. THE TWENTY-EIGHT SCENES

Each scene is its own engine with its own reaction to the music. Kicks cause structural change in every one of them. The scene number is the key you press; the remaining scenes sit past 0, on the arrows, the scene grid, and the SCENE dropdown.

1 INK

A full-screen fluid shader of folding, domain-warped smoke. Bass deepens the warp; kicks push bloom light through the folds.

2 RELIC

A raymarched 3D Mandelbulb. Kicks morph the bulb's power in an eased random walk, so every hit regrows the whole structure. It is lit and moves slowly. The tilt slider cranes the camera above or below the structure; sweep it live for a slow orbital dive.

3 SIGNAL

The meters family, technical analysis views. This scene measures the audio as it is and does not scale with REACT. Five modes on the MODE control:

analyzer

a spectrum analyzer with peak-hold

waterfall

a scrolling spectrogram terrain, kicks shear faults into the history as it scrolls

scope

a triggered oscilloscope of the waveform

vector

a goniometer, the stereo field as a live cloud

lissajous

an XY pen, left channel against right. Identical channels draw the diagonal, a 90 degree phase draws a circle, and arpeggios trace their figures live. Turn up shape and the pen extrudes through depth, each pass freezing into a slowly turning wireframe. Speed is the afterglow when flat and the spin when extruded. Kicks tear a gap into the depth.

The shape and complexity sliders morph each meter's layout.

4 LIMITLESS

The image-trip engine, and the one that responds to dropped photos, dropped videos, and the camera. Twenty-one modes on the MODE control. The panel lists them A to Z after none, so you can find one by name mid-set. Here they run with the ones Alec reaches for first at the top, the order the Mode parameter counts in (section 17):

none

no physics at all: the plain picture or feed at full brightness. The clean canvas for the lens, symmetry, tiles, and the rest of the tune panel

smear

a domain-warp drag

droste

a log-polar spiral, image inside itself

infinite

the infinity mirror: your picture recedes into itself layer by layer, a neon frame at every depth, and each kick sends a pulse of light diving down the tunnel. Speed is the dive, complexity is the layer spacing, and shape morphs the frame from a rectangle to a circle

corridor

a one-point perspective hallway papered with your picture, corner seams glowing. Kicks send a pulse of light away down the hall

cube

flying through closed rooms papered with your picture: the far wall approaches, lights up, and you pass through it into the next room

planet

your picture wrapped around a slowly turning sphere with a palette halo. Kicks relight it from a new angle

windows

a wall of screens, each holding your picture at its own slight delay. Kicks snap every screen to now

melt

a flowing advection simulation

shatter

a voronoi fracture that kicks explode

prism

per-channel warp tears

terrain

the image's brightness becomes a landscape you fly over

breathe

the picture stays readable while it moves: its textures crawl along their own contours, edges shimmy, color fringes with the energy, and once in a while a strong hit slides the frame toward recursion and lets it ease back

mosh

motion in the source drags its own pixels into smears, and every kick snaps a clean frame back. Made for video and the camera; a still photo only drifts faintly

sort

bright runs stretch into sorted streaks down their columns, the pixel-sorting glitch. Kicks re-cut the columns

coral

a growth pattern spreads through the picture, feeding on its bright zones. Kicks drop new colonies, and the palette lights the growth

scanline

a slit-scan time shear: rows refresh at their own lag and slide sideways as they age, so motion shreds into scans. Kicks snap every row back to now

thresh

screen-print posterize: the picture's colors slam into flat bands with inked contours between them. Kicks knock the level count down for a beat

solar

solarize: everything past a slowly wandering threshold flips negative. Kicks widen the flip

halftone

a rotated dot screen, every dot in the picture's own color. Kicks click the screen angle

vhs

tape damage: tracking wobble, color bleeding sideways, speckle, and the head-switch mess along the bottom. Kicks slam the tracking

DRY/WET sets how much effect sits on your picture. All the way up is the full mode; all the way down is your untouched picture. In between, the effect itself grows: the warp bends further, the cracks spread, the hallway opens out of the frame, the picture curls into a planet. Nothing fades over the top, so automating DRY/WET from 0 to 100 across a section turns plain footage into the full trip in time with the track. It hides in none, which is already the plain picture, and in terrain, which has no flat image to fade to.

DRY/WET runs the tune panel too. Symmetry, tiles, twist, slice, the lens, trails, glow, color fringe, vignette and grain all grow in with it, so at 0 you see your untouched picture with every panel setting still dialed in, and at 100 you get the mode and the whole panel together. The mirror line slides in from the edge, tiles multiply out from the middle, a kaleidoscope opens from the center, and the pixel wall pulls each cell's picture into a block. A logo or text layer stays on at every setting. In none and terrain the panel runs at full.

FIT PHOTO keeps your picture whole. At 0 the photo covers the whole window and crops whatever does not fit, so a square photo on a wide screen loses its top and bottom. Turn it up and the photo shrinks to show all of itself once, centered, with the background around it, and the mode plays over the whole frame. FILL still sets its size. It hides in corridor, cube, planet and terrain, which wrap the picture onto their own shapes.

Your picture keeps its own colors in every mode. It keeps its own brightness too: a photo or video shows up looking exactly like the file, and the music adds glow to its highlights. The palette colors the world around it: the kick accents, the terrain sky. Dropping a photo also pulls a five-color palette from it, so the rest of the engine matches the image.

Drop a video and it loops as the source, silent, with the same modes on top. A video with its own sound, dropped while no track is loaded in Photism Online or the app, becomes the track instead, and its picture plays here in step with that sound (section 15). PHOTO OR VIDEO in the scene's panel folder picks a photo or a clip from a file dialog instead, and PHOTO OR VIDEO under image · photo or video does the same from any scene. The camera button in the scene's panel folder puts your live feed there instead, mirrored the way you expect to see yourself, and it starts in breathe so the feed reads clean before you reach for the wilder modes.

5 CITADEL

A raymarched Mandelbox lattice, relic's sibling. Kicks morph the fold scale, rebuilding the lattice into a new piece of architecture on every hit. The tilt slider cranes the camera from under the lattice to straight over it.

6 MANDALA

A kali fractal, iterated folds forming a live mandala. Kick and sub breathe the zoom; energy drives the glow.

7 SYNAPSE

A constellation graph that builds itself from the music. Kicks drop big cores near the center, mids place mid nodes, highs scatter distant motes. Nodes link to their neighbors, drift, and age out.

8 FLUID

A stable-fluids simulation on the GPU, with a quarter million particles riding the flow. The audio injects dye and stirs vorticity, so bass pumps the swirl and the fluid keeps folding through quiet passages. DENSITY crossfades the ink against the particle cloud, FILL sets the grain size, and COMPLEXITY pulls the cloud into shapes that jump to a new form on accented kicks.

9 MORPHOGEN

A morphogen is the chemical Alan Turing proposed as the seed of natural pattern, and this scene runs that model. Two chemicals feed and kill each other on a grid, and the display cuts the result into a crisp two-tone mark that grows live: coral limbs, fat lobes, labyrinth veins. A mirror fold turns the growth into a symmetric inkblot. The music runs the chemistry: loud sections speed it up, quiet passages slow it to a crawl, bass swells the lobes, and a strong accented kick shifts the feed and kill rates so the whole figure re-textures itself. Hold the mouse down on the canvas to paint new growth under the cursor, mirrored live by the fold. The fold slider picks the symmetry: free growth low, a bilateral mirror through the middle, both axes high. Pattern slides the chemistry from cell dots through worms to dense coral. Spread sets how far the figure may grow before its edges die back. Scale sets the feature size, fine veins to fat lobes, and a moved slider lets the figure reflow itself to the new size.

0 GATE

A raymarched corridor of colossal arches. The camera walks forward forever, arch after arch sliding past toward a glow that never gets closer. The slabs stay near black and machined: inset plates, vent slots, channel seams, and small lit windows that answer the highs, with the light in the haze and on the stepped arch rims. Accented kicks re-tune the passage: every arch steps to a new opening and the deep lips swap sides, eased so the architecture moves without a cut. Every kick sends a pulse of light racing away down the hall. Shape sweeps the hall itself: left of center leans the A-frame steeper, right of center morphs the whole passage through square and hexagonal into a circular tube, arches and all. Complexity runs the machining from smooth monolith to dense circuitry, arches sets how tightly the frames stack, fill closes the openings down around you, and tilt cranes the view toward the apex.

11 SAND

A Chladni plate: sand gathering on the nodal lines of a vibrating surface. The pattern comes from the actual spectrum. The plate modes closest to the loudest frequencies in your music carry the figure, so a chord change redraws it, and the redraw waits for an accent. Sub widens the sand lines, highs make the grains twinkle, kicks toss the sand. The shape slider morphs the plate from square to circular. The figure slider has twelve detents: each click steps the pattern to the next shape in the plate's mode family, and between clicks the figure holds. The grains slider pours more sand.

12 IDOL

A raymarched Mandelbox carved into a radially symmetric mandala, faced head-on. The carving morphs the whole time, slowly. Accented kicks re-seat it: the fold scale walks to a new relief and the carving clicks a notch, so every accent re-blooms the figure without snapping. Sub leans the camera in, highs light the carved edges, energy carries the luminosity. The petals slider sets the symmetry order, four arms to twelve. The relief slider sweeps the carving from shallow lacework to deep cavities. Fill moves from the whole idol to macro detail.

13 ORACLE

A raymarched machine temple. The body of the structure stays near black and the palette works on the edges: rim light traces the architecture, glowing beads run along the tube work, and a bilateral mirror folds the whole tangle into a mandala. Accented kicks morph the fold and the chamber rebuilds around you, spaced out so the rebuilds stay apart. The shape slider sets the chamber proportions, fold spirals the tube work into rosettes, fill moves you from outside the temple to deep inside it, and tilt cranes the camera through the tangle. The raymarched scenes carry the tilt slider, and you can sweep it live.

14 ANEMONE

A bloom of beaded light. Every element is a chain of small glowing rings, and every chain pours out of one point. The whole field lies on a tilted plane, so one side of the frame hangs deeper than the other. Four patterns on the MODE control, and switching morphs one shape into the next:

bloom

chains pour radially out of the source

vortex

winding rings orbit the source, outer rings near, inner rings sinking away down a funnel

braid

a helical rope of chains twisting toward you

veil

a layered curtain of chains flowing sideways past the source, deep sheets behind, shallow in front

The tilt slider owns the lean, and because it rides the Shape parameter, you can automate the plane swinging across a whole song. The mouse pushes the lean on top of the slider and the source point drifts to live under your cursor; press Shift+Space to let go of the mouse, and note the panel never steers it. Strong accented kicks tip the plane and it settles back to your setting. Hold the mouse button and the stream pulls back in; release and it pours out again. Leave the mouse alone for a few seconds and everything eases home. Strong accented kicks click the flower into a new petal count, and every kick sends a pulse of light racing out along the chains. Bass swells the petals, highs sparkle stray beads. Color starts from the palette and fans around it along each chain, so a colorful palette blooms into full spectrum and pearl stays silver. Shape deepens the petals and curls the chains, density thins the strands, fill pushes the whole bloom closer.

15 FORGE

A nanite flock that builds constructs. Sixty-five thousand machined chrome shards fly as one flock, every one a tiny metal splinter glinting as it banks, wandering the frame on their own patrol. The construct is yours to choose: the form slider clicks through eighteen shapes, detent by detent, cube and octahedron and tetrahedron frames, gimbal rings, an exploded stack, a schematic grid, a trefoil knot, a double helix, a lissajous weave, a banded sphere, a torus, a spiral galaxy, a rounded monolith, a turbine, an atom, a mobius band, an urchin, a vortex funnel, a nested shield lattice. Moving the slider re-grips the flock into the new shape on the spot, and strong accented kicks hammer it into the chosen form hard. The construct holds centered, tumbles slowly, stays lit, then shatters back into flight. Iridescent color arrives on assembly: thin-film shimmer blooms across the construct and drains away, and the resting flock stays chrome off the palette. Ordinary kicks breathe the cloud outward. Form picks the construct, complexity is turn wildness and spread, density thins the shards, fill sizes them, tilt cranes the camera above and below the flock.

16 INGOT

A polished chrome sculpture floating in a dark studio. A crescent of stacked liquid-metal blades, cut through with lens-shaped holes, and the metal never stops flowing. All the color is reflection. The palette tints the studio lights, a soft key, a horizon strip, a floor bounce, and the metal stays silver in between, so pearl reads factory chrome and a warm palette pours bronze. Strong accented kicks re-crystallize the grain: the blades re-aim inside the same silhouette and the key light swings to a new angle. Bass melts the metal so the blades pour, mids push the flow, highs tighten the glints. Shape sweeps a level wreath into a breaking crest, metal fills the form from razor foil to solid billet, complexity refines the blades, fill moves from the whole sculpture to macro detail, tilt cranes the camera.

17 SPACETIME

Streams of neon light rays rushing one way through the dark, hot cores over black, all of them converging on a vanishing point somewhere past the edge of the frame. The whole field travels in a single direction. Two modes on the MODE control:

forward

the stream pours toward you

reverse

the stream pours away

Switching modes never cuts: the rays decelerate, hang for a beat, and pour back the other way. Kicks fire thick hero comets through the stream, and a strong accented kick after a rest re-rolls the entire field, so the stream restructures on the big hits. Every kick also races a wave of light along the stream. Bass widens the ray cores, highs scintillate the ray heads, and the whole sky follows the loudness of the song. The direction slider aims the stream anywhere around the screen. Detail adds far parallax layers and breaks some rays into bead trains, dotted trails behind the fast rays. Rays sets the population, and the top half of the slider pours in two more strata of fine far rays, a meteor storm at full. Width thickens the beams.

18 PELT

A field of dense fur under studio light, and you can brush it. Drag the mouse across the canvas and the nap combs along your stroke, then heals back to its groom over about fifteen seconds. Hold the button and the fur parts around the cursor. The music combs it too: mids gust waves through the nap, bass swells the mounds underneath, highs spark in the tips, every kick sends a ripple front across the field, and a strong accented kick re-parts the whole groom, new whorls and a new lay the pelt eases into over a couple of seconds. Groom sets the crimp of the strands, strands sets how many, length grows the coat, tilt cranes the camera from grazing to overhead.

19 WISP

A world of fine dust with one bright wanderer in it. A million particles: a faint field of grains fills the whole frame from the first second, and the wanderer, itself a loose knot of glowing grains around a hot heart, sprays fresh matter wherever it flies. What it sheds lives for tens of seconds and churns slowly the whole time, so the flight history piles into billowing clouds and the trails lie all over the frame. Fast grains draw as tiny streaks along their motion, long guard hairs curl off the flow in locks and cowlicks, and every strand is lit by the wanderer's lamp, so the near side of a cloud glows and the far side falls dark like real fur. Every kick pumps light through the nearby dust and erupts a puff of fresh spray at the orb. A strong accented kick after a rest sends the orb darting on a fresh heading, flips the vortex it drags through the dust, and throws an arcing chain of glowing beads that rides the same currents. Bass swells the orb, highs sparkle the grains, and the whole picture follows the loudness of the song. Move the mouse and the wanderer rides your cursor exactly; flick it and the spray whips. Hold the button and it condenses, tight and bright. Leave it alone and it wanders. Roam sets how far it patrols, detail sharpens the fine turbulence, trail sets how long shed dust lives, and size grows the orb, its spray, and the streaks.

20 GROVE

An endless drift through a fractal forest. Three tree species grown by a branching rule stand on rolling ground, mist hangs between the trunks, light blades come down through the canopy, and the camera walks a winding trail forever. Mossy boulders and low ferns line the way. Every kick sends a front of light racing away down the trail. A strong accented kick bends the route: the woods ahead swing to a new heading and a fresh corridor opens, near trunks holding still while the far forest turns. The mouse steers your gaze; hold the button to ease to a stop and look around, and the wind keeps the forest moving while you stand. Mood is the big ride: misty daylight at the left end, and sliding right puts the sun down until the forest lights itself, glowing canopy, fireflies, and ember specks in the moss. Growth prunes the crown from bare winter skeletons to full summer canopy, density thins or crowds the stand, fill sets limb weight and canopy size.

21 DESCENT

A continuous inward journey through a recursive stone vault. Cavities contain smaller cavities, with the same structure repeating at every scale. The view keeps descending without a turnaround. Speed sets the pace, carve opens the passages from dense masonry to thin latticework, and zoom changes the field of view. Tilt cranes the view around the vault, from a low grazing angle to a high view into its layers. The center restores the original angle. Complexity adds smaller chambers inside the larger ones, sweeping from broad rooms to dense nested detail. A side light throws shadows into the recesses. Kicks give the descent a short forward push. Strong accents ease the cavities open and closed while the destination stays fixed. Double-click a slider to return to its default.

MODE switches between multicolor and tonal. Multicolor gives adjoining walls and nested chambers different colors from the palette, with another color catching the edges. Tonal brings back the unified stone color with bright edges and shaded recesses. Switching styles blends the color while the journey continues. Nocturne combines violet, teal, and amber. Cobalt, vapor, and prism also give strong color separation. Moss and glacial keep their closer color families.

22 VISAGE

A carved head that is alive. A sculpted human face floats in the dark, carved like a tribal mask: rings around the eyes, spirals on the temples and cheeks, bars on the chin, and lines that keep flowing over the nose and skull while the ears and eyelids stay smooth. Fronds curl out of the crown and the neck like fiddleheads, mushrooms ride them, glyph bands orbit the head, and spores drift up past it. The eyes look around and blink, and they follow your cursor. Space switches eye tracking off or on; off brings the eyes forward while they keep blinking. The scene panel's eyes follow cursor switch shows the same choice. Drag to turn and tilt the head. Both sliders move with the drag, within their existing ranges, and the angle holds when you let go. Presets save that pose and the eye tracking choice. The carving, crown and orbiting bands keep moving. Shift+Space detaches the mouse and brings the eyes forward while keeping the saved head angle. Open swings the face apart down the middle like a pair of doors, and a smaller face of light comes forward from inside; automate it to open the head on a drop. Face morphs the head from masculine at the left end to feminine at the right, and features runs from soft and rounded to strong and deeply carved; both glide, so you can ride them through a song. Every kick races a spark around the bands and light out along the fronds, and wakes a ripple of glowing caps. A strong accented kick takes a turn at three changes: the carved rings slide one step outward, the bands swing to new tilts, or the whole crown draws back into the skull and grows a new one. Loud passages unfurl the fronds and quiet ones curl them tight. Turn sets where the head faces, tilt nods it, zoom walks from the whole figure in to the eyes, growth takes the crown from a bare skull to a wild tangle, and detail tightens the carving, adds side fronds, and packs more glyphs on the bands.

23 CHORUS

Twenty carved heads rigged to look around together. Each one is a slightly different face, carved like the visage mask, and every head turns and every eye follows one shared gaze, each a moment behind the next, while each face blinks on its own clock. Formation carries the crowd through four arrangements: a choir on risers with cheeks touching at the left end, then a ball of masks that turns slowly, then a spiral totem of busts, and at the right end a hall of faces that flows past the camera and turns to watch you go by. The heads fly between arrangements exactly as fast as you move the slider; park it between two marks for a crowd that is half one and half the other. The arrangement never moves with the music, and the carving and the eyes glow with it. Motes drift up through the dark all around, near and far. Move the mouse and every head turns to your cursor. Drag to turn the whole crowd; let go and it drifts back. Shift+Space lets go of the mouse, and every head and every eye comes back to face the front. Growth takes the heads from bare skulls to a crown of fiddlehead fronds and mushrooms, variety runs from twenty copies of one face at the left end to twenty strangers at the right, zoom walks in and out, and detail tightens the carving.

24 LIMITLESS 3D

limitless for 3D models. A model holds its angle in the middle of the frame, lit by the palette, and MODEL in the scene's panel folder picks which one: nine are built in (knot, crystal, shell, lotus, orb and helix, plus a human skull, a marble bust and a complete open hand), and any model you drop on the window joins them (section 12). Drag the model to turn and tilt it; the angle stays where you leave it, and the output window and its Syphon or Spout feed turn with it. Hovering the cursor does not turn the model. Shift+Space lets go of the mouse and tips the model back to rest. The shape holds still through the song: the sliders set it, and the music drives the light, the melt and a small push on each kick. Six modes pick what happens to it:

form

the model itself. Chrome pulls every material toward palette chrome, and melt ripples the surface with the bass

shatter

the model split into shards that hang in the air and tumble. Spread takes it from a cracked model at the left end to a drifting cloud of shards at the right, and shards sets how fine it breaks

dust

the model as a cloud of glowing grains on its surface. Drift loosens it into the flow, flow sets how the grains swirl, grains sets how many. An animated model keeps moving as a cloud

hologram

a glowing wireframe with a rim of light. A scan line climbs the model on every strong kick; scan sets how fast it idles, lines how bold the wire is, glass how much of the surface shows

slices

the model cut into floating layers that turn slowly against each other. Twist sets how far they turn, slices how many, gap how far apart they float

voxel

the model rebuilt from palette cubes. Blocks sets how fine the grid is, gap the space between cubes, solid how many cells stay filled. An animated model steps through its motion a few times a second, like stop motion

Fill sets the model's size, tilt cranes the camera from below to above, and speed sets the turn. A model keeps its own materials and textures, and one that carries an animation plays it on a loop.

25 VESICA

Sacred geometry drawn by compass, in time with the music. Each kick swings the compass for the next step of a real construction: one circle, then two (the vesica the scene is named for), then the seed of life, then the whole flower. The pen keeps time with the kicks: at the middle speed a circle takes two beats. Once the figure is drawn it holds, the kicks send a light back along its lines in the order they were drawn, and the hi-hats spark small stars where the lines meet. Three quiet seconds fade the drawing away, and when the music comes back the compass draws it fresh. Drawing switches that off: set to fully drawn, the whole figure is there at once and stays through the quiet parts, and the kicks still send light along its lines. Seven modes pick the figure:

flower

the flower of life: the circle lattice inside its ring, nineteen whole circles and thirty-six arcs, with a petal standing upright at the top

metatron

Metatron's cube: the thirteen circles of the fruit of life and all 78 lines between their centers

merkaba

the star tetrahedron, one tetrahedron point up and one point down. It turns slowly, and a kick twists the two apart before they spring back

equilibrium

the vector equilibrium, Buckminster Fuller's cuboctahedron, with its twelve radial lines and four great circles

torus

the torus: circles that all pass through the middle, the seed of life turned round its center

golden

three golden rectangles standing square to one another, whose twelve corners are an icosahedron's

grid

the 64 tetrahedron grid: eight star tetrahedra whose inner points meet at the center, around a vector equilibrium core. Seen down its axis it lines up with the flower of life

Draw sets how much of the figure the compass draws. At the right end it draws everything; pull it back and the compass undoes its work on the beat, newest lines first, and stops where you leave it. Automate it to build a figure through a riser and take it apart in the breakdown. Medium runs from chalk at the left end (a grainy silver pen on black paper) through ink in the middle (bold print lines with a double ring) to glow at the right end (a gold medallion with a halo, a banded border and a stippled sunburst). Color comes from the palette: sodium or ember give the gold of the poster prints. Figure picks how far each construction goes, with the classic figure in the middle. It answers the moment you move it and never zooms: the circles keep their size, and parts are added or taken away around the same center (zoom sets the size): the flower runs from the vesica and the seed up to a grand flower and a full field, Metatron adds the flower under the cube and then a smaller cube inside it, the torus runs from six circles to ninety-six, the grid grows from its vector equilibrium core to all eight stars and then a sphere at every point, and the solids add their cube, octahedron, spheres or dodecahedron. Turn tilts a flat figure back like a disc, and swings a solid from standing on its point to facing you down its axis, where it lines up with the circles behind it. Contrast sets the figure against the ground: low contrast lays a faint circle lattice across the whole frame, high contrast leaves the figure alone on black. Zoom scales the figure, and speed sets how fast the compass draws and the solids turn.

26 LOCUS

A swarm of up to half a million glowing particles holding a shape, and flying to the next one when you pick it. The formation menu lists 34 by name, in five groups: pure math (the Aizawa attractor, the Hopf fibration, a torus knot, a turning tesseract, a spherical harmonic, a Lissajous shell, a Chladni plate), sacred geometry (the Platonic solids, a merkaba, the flower of life, Metatron's cube, a Sri Yantra, a Sierpinski tetrahedron, a vortex torus), growing things (a lotus, a seashell, a fractal tree, a double helix), creatures (a jellyfish, a butterfly, two koi, a whale, a manta ray, an octopus, a dragon) and the cosmos (an aurora, a ringed planet, a solar system, a black hole, a pulsar, a nebula, a spiral galaxy, a deep field, the cosmic web). The HUD names the formation on screen. A new pick peels the swarm off strand by strand, arcs it round and settles it into the new shape in about three seconds. The music never changes the formation; it moves the light and the flow. Energy lights the swarm, mids stream the particles along their paths and pace the formations that move on their own (the jellyfish pulses, the tree sways), sub breathes the swarm outward, highs make it shimmer and spark, and a strong hit after a rest surges the stream and rolls a ring of light through it. Rotate turns the whole swarm, from still at the left end. Scatter loosens the particles off their lines, particles sets how many fly, zoom sets how close you are, and contrast sets how hard the brightest strands burn against the dark.

27 CRYSTAL

An endless dive into a spiralling rosette of polished gemstones, each ring of gems a smaller copy of the one around it. Bloom turns the gems from narrow spires into broad petals. Complexity cuts their faces into finer facets. Branching splits each petal into mirrored forks, a denser crown the further you push it. Hollow opens a diamond window through every gem. Zoom runs from a wide view of the whole rosette to a close lens on its center, and tilt leans the camera to look across the rings. Speed sets the pace of the dive. Energy brightens the stones, highs sharpen their highlights, and a strong kick nudges the bloom open or closed. Trails stay off up to the middle and fade in above it.

28 PEARL

An endless dive into pearls packed on a cone, six large ones to a ring, each ring turned against the next, with smaller pearls filling the gaps and every pearl reflecting its neighbours. Packing sets how tightly they sit. Complexity carves fluted grooves and channels into their surface. Nesting fills the gaps with smaller pearls, and smaller ones again. Bore pierces every pearl through its center. Zoom and tilt frame the view, and speed sets the pace of the dive. Energy brightens the nacre, highs sharpen the reflections, and a strong kick nudges the packing. Trails stay off up to the middle and fade in above it.

Crystal and Pearl are the two heaviest scenes. On a Mac with AMD graphics, such as an Intel iMac with a Radeon card, they show greyed on the scene card as too heavy for this Mac, and the keys, arrows, shuffle, presets and host automation pass them by. If your Mac runs them fine, click a greyed card, then click again to confirm. That Mac remembers the choice and both scenes open from then on. A preset or a saved session still never opens them by itself.

11. THE PALETTES

Everything in every scene draws from a five-slot palette: background, shadow, mid, accent, glow. Press P (or click the p · button) for the palette card, or pick one from the PALETTE dropdown. On the card the palettes sit in four groups; click a group header to fold it away, and the card remembers your folds.

CLASSIC, the original seven. Mostly one hue walked from dark to light:

1 nocturne

deep violet, teal, warm amber

2 ember

charcoal to red to cream

3 glacial

ice blue and near-white

4 orchid

magenta and warm pink

5 moss

forest green to pale lime

6 sodium

dark to sodium-lamp gold

7 pearl

neutral greyscale to white

BOLD. Two or three hue families per palette, so hits change the color as well as the brightness:

8 cobalt

deep blue with a hot orange accent

9 reef

teal water, coral accent

10 vapor

magenta against cyan

11 oxide

rust and verdigris, like weathered copper

12 aurora

violet sky with green light

13 velvet

royal purple with a gold accent

14 acid

lime with magenta hits

15 neon

night-city red against cyan

16 mirage

indigo dusk, rose and sand

EARTH. Quiet materials with one contrast note:

17 canyon

red rock with dusty sage

18 adobe

terracotta with dusty blue

19 sage

olive, wheat, linen

20 umber

walnut, ochre, bone

RAINBOW. The four lit slots span the wheel, so scenes that sweep the ramp pour out a full spectrum:

21 prism

violet, blue, red, yellow

22 carnival

purple, green, pink, gold

23 candy

bubblegum, sky, lemon

24 tropic

jungle green, hibiscus, mango

HUE DRIFT slowly walks the active palette if you want motion in the color itself.

12. DROPPING IMAGES AND 3D MODELS

Drag any image onto the control window.

• An opaque photo becomes a five-color palette, taken from the image, and feeds the limitless scene as its source. Drop your album art and the visuals match the record.

• A transparent logo becomes an emblem that the engine refracts into the patterns.

A photo or video shows as the picture on scene 4 (limitless) only. Every other scene takes its five colors, so a drop there changes the color and leaves the picture as it was. On those scenes the chip reads "colors taken · the image plays on limitless" and offers SHOW IT, which switches to limitless. Drag the file in from Finder or Explorer. To pick it from a file dialog instead, open the tune panel and use PHOTO OR VIDEO under image · photo or video.

The guess can go the wrong way: a transparent logo is also exactly what the limitless scene wants as its image. Every drop shows a small chip for a few seconds saying where the image went, with one button to send it the other way instead. Click it and the drop reroutes: an emblem becomes the image and colors, a photo becomes the emblem and your palette comes back.

That chip only lasts a few seconds. To take a photo back out later, switch to limitless, open the tune panel and click CLEAR PHOTO in the scene's folder (CLEAR VIDEO for a clip). The scene returns to the source it started with and your palette comes back. The emblem has its own CLEAR EMBLEM under image · emblem.

CLEAN (NO FX) in the same folder puts the emblem on top of the finished picture, so symmetry, trails, bloom and the lens all pass it by and it shows once, sharp, where you put it. Turn it off and the engine refracts the emblem into the patterns again, with the logo itself still drawn on top in its full color, so a white logo stays white while the trails and the glow work around it.

The sliders in image · emblem shape the logo. OPACITY sets how solid it is and SIZE how big. SPIN turns it slowly; set SPIN back to 0 and it eases back upright. PULSE is how much the logo moves with the music. At 0 it holds perfectly still while the scene keeps reacting behind it. Turn it up and it breathes with the track and grows on each kick. PALETTE ↔ WHITE colors it from your palette's glow at one end to pure white at the other. INVERT is for a dark logo on a light background: it makes the dark parts the shape.

SHADOW casts a soft shadow under the emblem, down and to the right, so the logo lifts off the visual. At 0 there is none. DEPTH sets how far it lifts: low keeps the shadow tight under the logo, high throws it further and softens it. The shadow grows with the emblem's size and works on an image and a model.

MOVING THE EMBLEM

While image · emblem is open, the emblem wears a thin box on the stage. Drag the box to move it anywhere in the frame; it catches on the center lines. Drag the square corner to make it bigger or smaller, and the round knob above it to turn it; it catches when it is upright. A double-click on the box sends it back to the center, upright, at the size slider's size. The × on the box clears the emblem. Close the folder and the box goes away. It never shows on the output window or in a recording, but the emblem's new place does.

A centered emblem refracts into the patterns like before. Moved anywhere else, it enters after symmetry so the mirror cannot fold it away, and it still gets trails, bloom and the lens. Presets remember where it sits. A 3D emblem moves the same way; with the folder closed, drag the model itself to turn it.

ADD ANOTHER EMBLEM puts up to three more images on the stage beside the first, each with a box of its own: a sponsor's logo next to yours, or an image beside a 3D emblem. Click a box to pick it, then drag it the same way. Delete or Backspace takes away the box you clicked last. The × on an added image takes only that one away; the × on the first emblem lets the next one take its place. The sliders above work on all of them together, and CLEAR EMBLEM clears every one. Added images reach the output window and its Syphon or Spout feed, and presets remember them and where they sit. They are images only: a 3D model can be the first emblem.

A drop belongs to the session, not to the window you dropped it on. If you have the output window open alongside the control window, one drop lands in both. The same goes for taking it back out: clear the photo in one window and both windows drop it.

JPEG, PNG, GIF and WebP work everywhere, and so do SVG, AVIF and BMP on a current system. An iPhone's HEIC and TIFF work in the Mac app, the VST on a Mac and Safari. Photism redraws anything past JPEG, PNG, GIF and WebP as a PNG or JPEG the moment it lands, so every window shows the same pixels and pulls the same colors. A file the window cannot open brings up "that image format will not open here" and changes nothing. Export it as a JPEG or PNG and drop that. If a drop cannot reach the other windows, its chip adds "this window only", and the output window and its Syphon or Spout feed keep what they had.

Clips work the same way. Anything the window plays on its own works, which means H.264 in an .mp4 or a .mov everywhere. Photism also plays two VJ codecs itself: Resolume DXV (DXV3 at normal or high quality, with or without alpha, and the older DXV) and Motion JPEG, also called Photo-JPEG, in a .mov or an .avi. A clip in a codec the window cannot play brings up a chip that names it, such as "ProRes will not play here", and changes nothing. Export it as H.264 or DXV and drop that. Clips loop silent. A clip up to 2 GB reaches the output window and its Syphon or Spout feed (256 MB in Photism Online); past that, its chip adds "this window only". In the app, the VST and the Max device, the output window starts playing a big clip while it is still being stored, so it shows right behind the control window.

The source is stored once and both windows load it by the same id. This keeps a large photo or video out of the wire and gives every window the same five extracted palette colors. A window opened later picks up the current source as it connects. Photism Online keeps the source in your browser. The plugin and app keep it in their own media store.

Presets follow the same rule. Save, rename or delete a preset in the control window and every open window picks up the library, so loading a preset by name or by PRESET number lands on the same look in the output window too.

Scenes that follow the mouse share it too, in the app, the VST and Photism Online alike. With morphogen selected, move or hold the mouse in the control window and the output window follows the same place, so a Syphon or Spout feed steers from the window you are working in. Releasing the button stops the paint in both. The mouse belongs to the control window: moving it over the output window changes nothing there, and a new window starts neutral until the next move.

The camera is the exception. It is a device on your machine rather than a file, so no other window can follow it.

3D MODELS

Drag a 3D model onto the control window and Photism switches to scene 24 (limitless 3d) with your model on the turntable. It reads:

• .glb and .gltf, Blender's standard export (File, Export, glTF 2.0) and what Unreal's glTF exporter writes
• .fbx, the usual export from Unreal, Mixamo and asset stores
• .obj, .stl and .ply, including phone scans and gaussian splat files, which draw as colored points

A model is one file. Photism reads what the file carries inside itself and never loads anything the file points to beside it. Export a single .glb rather than a .gltf with a separate .bin, and embed the textures when you export an FBX, if your exporter offers it. Textures left in a folder beside the file stay out, and the model shows in its plain colors. A .glb compressed with Draco or meshopt will not open: export it again with compression off. Models up to 8 million triangles open. Any file Photism cannot use says why on the drop chip and leaves the current model where it was.

Your model joins the MODEL list under its file name, so you can flip between it and the built-in models, and CLEAR MODEL in the same folder takes it back out. A dropped model has its own place beside the limitless image and the emblem, so dropping one never replaces either. It reaches the output window and its Syphon or Spout feed, presets remember it, and the VST saves it with your set.

3D EMBLEMS

A 3D model can be the emblem too. The chip after a model drop offers USE AS EMBLEM INSTEAD. Click it and the model leaves limitless 3d, the scene you were on comes back, and the model takes the emblem's place. EMBLEM FROM IMAGE OR 3D under image · emblem does the same from a file picker and leaves the scene where it is. The emblem reads the same files limitless 3d does.

A 3D emblem gets limitless 3d's looks. LOOK in the emblem folder picks form, shatter, dust, hologram, slices or voxel, lit in your palette the way limitless 3d lights them, and the emblem keeps those colors. OPACITY, SIZE and PULSE work as they do for a logo. With PULSE at 0 the model's light holds steady; turn it up and the look answers the music as well. PALETTE ↔ WHITE and INVERT only apply to an image emblem, so they step aside while a model is up, and LOOK shows only then. The emblem's SPIN turns the model on its own axis. Set it back to 0 and the model eases round to face front. A model with its own animation keeps playing. The chip for a 3D emblem offers USE IN LIMITLESS 3D INSTEAD to send it back. A 3D emblem reaches the output window and its Syphon or Spout feed, presets remember it, and the VST saves it with your set.

BLEND sets how an emblem meets the visual: pick over, fill or original. At over, the emblem lays its light on top of the scene. At fill, the scene shows only inside the emblem in its own colors, so the logo is made of the visual and the rest of the frame goes dark. At original, an image shows exactly as the file is, in its own colors and its own transparency, on top of the finished picture the way CLEAN (NO FX) puts it. Black stays black and a half-clear area stays half clear. PALETTE ↔ WHITE and INVERT step aside there. Over and fill work on an image and a model; a model at original shows as it does at over.

TEXT

The text folder puts words on screen: your DJ name, a track title, the name of the night, or a whole song's lyrics. Type in the box, one line per row. A name is one line. Lyrics are one row per phrase, up to 512 rows of up to 48 characters. Text sits on its own layer, so a logo and text can show at the same time.

One line shows at a time, and you move it: the ] key (back with [), the NEXT LINE and PREVIOUS LINE buttons, or anything you bind to Text Next with MIDI learn, like a pad or a footswitch.

TRANSITION sets how one line hands over to the next, whatever the look:

• cut swaps the line at once
• fade fades the old line out, holds a moment of empty screen, and fades the new one in. It is the default, and the one for lyrics
• spring lifts the old line away and springs the new one in letter by letter

In the VST two lanes drive the lines from the arrangement. Text Line pins a line: draw it at 3 and line 3 shows until the lane goes back to 0, where the keys and Text Next take over again. Text Next steps to the next line each time it rises from 0 to 1, so a lane of short blips, or a MIDI note learned onto it, plays the lyrics in time with the song.

LOOK sets how the text moves with the music. none keeps it still, so the music reaches it only through PULSE. The rest step on the kick:

• rise springs each letter up into place as its line arrives, and the line pops on every kick
• spell lights one letter per kick and holds the rest dim, so the whole line stays readable between hits
• stack prints the line on a turning drum: a solid row in the middle, outline rows above and below, one row further round on every kick
• sweep passes a band of weight across the line, letter by letter
• ring wraps the line round a tilted ring that turns one copy on every fourth kick and holds with a copy facing you

FONT picks one of eighteen faces, one for each kind of job: Google Sans Flex, Unbounded, Anybody, Big Shoulders, Instrument Serif, Gloock, Martian Mono, Dela Gothic One, Bagel Fat One, UnifrakturMaguntia, Bitcount, Handjet, Big Shoulders Stencil, Rampart One, Italiana, Kablammo, Shrikhand and Alfa Slab One. Or use a font of your own: LOAD YOUR OWN FONT takes a .ttf, .otf or .woff2 file and adds it to the FONT menu. Photism keeps it in this browser or app for next time. A font you load shows in the window you loaded it in; the output window keeps a built-in face for now.

LOOK, TRANSITION and FONT are menus: pick one of each. PACE sets how often spell, stack and ring step: every kick, every 2 kicks or every

4. Every kick still punches the text, whatever the pace.

SIZE, OPACITY, PULSE, SPIN and PALETTE ↔ WHITE work on text the way they work on a logo. BLEND works the same way too: at fill the letters are made of the visual. CLEAN (NO FX) is on by default, so the words sit on top of the finished frame where the lens and the trails cannot bend them, and past the grain and the color fringe a kick puts on the frame, so the letters keep clean edges. Turn it off and the text glows and smears with the scene.

While the text folder is open, the words wear a box on the stage, the same as an emblem's. Drag it to put the words anywhere in the frame, drag the square corner to size them (the SIZE slider follows), and the round knob to turn them. A double-click on the box sends the words back to the center, upright. The × on the box turns the text off and keeps your lines.

Text reaches the output window and its Syphon or Spout feed, and presets remember it with its look, font, timing and place. A look saved without text leaves the current text showing, the way a look without a logo leaves the logo.

In the app and the VST, the windows also keep their drift together. Hue drift, spin, the emblem's turn and the motion every scene runs on its own clock line up across the control window and the output window, so the projector, the Syphon or Spout feed and the window you tune in show the same colors at the same angle. The window that has been open longest leads. A window you open later lands on the running look at once, and reopening the VST editor never jolts an output that is already running. What each scene does on a kick is still decided in each window on its own, and in Photism Online each tab keeps its own drift.

13. PER-SCENE SLIDERS

Each scene has its own handful of sliders in the panel, under a heading with the scene's name. Depending on the scene these are labeled speed, shape, complexity, density, fill, tilt, open, morph, edge, or contrast. They shape that scene's character.

Many scenes call a slider by their own word for what it does: descent's shape reads carve, grove's reads mood. Those rows carry a small dim chip after the name with the automation lane behind them, so carve with a shape chip is the Shape parameter in your DAW. Rows without a chip already match their lane.

Map any of these to a macro to automate it. The macro drives whichever scene is playing, and its caption follows the scene, so one knob reads layout on the signal meters and shape elsewhere. Each scene still remembers its own settings, so to flip a whole scene look on a song section, save it as a preset and automate the PRESET slot.

14. PRESETS AND SLOTS

A preset saves the entire look: the macros, the frame transforms, the lens, the palette, and every scene's own sliders. It also saves the image or video you dropped, at any size, so a preset built around your album art comes back with the art when you reopen the set.

Save

In the preset browser, save the current look with a name.

Recall

Click a preset to load it.

Fold

Click a folder header to fold or unfold that group; a folded header shows its count. The browser remembers your folds, and loading or saving a preset unfolds its folder so the highlight is always visible. Give presets a folder name when you save and the browser groups them under it.

Pin

Click the # chip on a preset to pin it to a numbered slot, 1 to 128. The PRESET dropdown then lists your pinned presets by name, and the slot is what you automate. It never changes when you rename, save, or delete other presets. A number outside 1 to 128 leaves the pin as it was. Taking a slot another preset holds moves the slot over, and a note at the bottom of the window names the preset that gave it up.

Delete

Click the × on one of your presets, then click it again while it reads sure?.

Automate PRESET across a song and the whole look flips on the section boundary. The "none" slot means manual control.

Morph

The morph ms slider at the top of the preset browser sets how preset changes land. At 0 they cut on the instant the change arrives, tight enough to ride a downbeat. Raise it and every knob glides to the new look over that many milliseconds while scene and palette switches ride their own crossfades. Morph is a playing style, not part of the preset: it stays put on this machine and applies to every recall, including the B swap and undo randomize.

WHERE PRESETS LIVE, AND HOW TO MOVE THEM

The plugin keeps one library per user account, shared by every instance: the VST, the Audio Unit and the standalone app all read and write the same file, so a preset saved on one track shows up on the next one you open.

photism.app keeps a second, in the browser.

Those two do not sync with each other, and neither follows you to another machine. The preset library folder in the tune panel is how a library moves, and how you back one up.

Save library to file

Writes every preset you have saved, plus your pinned slots and your macro assignments, to one file. This is the backup, and the way onto another machine.

Load library from file

Reads that file back and merges it into the library you have open. Presets with the same name are replaced, everything else is kept.

Copy this look as text

Puts the current look on the clipboard as text, for sending one look to someone without sending your whole library.

Moving between them, or onto a second machine, is two steps: save the library to a file where your presets already are, then load that file where you want them. Do the same after any big session to keep a backup.

15. RECORDING, STILLS, FRAMES

R

Start recording. Press R again to stop, and the clip lands in your Downloads folder as an MP4. One press stops it: the record chip steps through finishing, adding sound and saving, then names the folder. Presses while it saves are ignored, so a double tap never starts a second take.

S

Save a still. A full-resolution PNG lands in your Downloads folder.

A

Cycle the frame aspect: full, 16:9, 9:16, 1:1. Set 9:16 for reels and stories, 1:1 for square posts, then record or shoot.

Clips record at each platform's native upload size no matter how small your window is: 1080x1920 for 9:16, 1080 square for 1:1, and up to 1440p for 16:9 and full, which YouTube serves from its sharper high-resolution codec tier. While a take rolls the renderer draws at the recording size, so a plugin window and a fullscreen one land the same file. The tune panel's "recording settings" folder holds the frame pick (the same four frames as the A key), a frame rate pick (60 fps, or 30 fps for half the file size and half the GPU work, good for long sets and 4K on a lighter machine), and a quality pick named for the size it writes. auto lets a slower computer draw heavy scenes smaller during a take to hold the frame rate, which saves a smaller file. 1080p, 1440p and 4K draw every pixel of the file and drop frames instead if they must. For 16:9 and full, 1080p writes 1920x1080 and 1440p writes 2560x1440; for 9:16 and 1:1 both write the platform size. 4K writes 3840x2160, or 2160x3840 for 9:16 (a machine without a 4K encoder records 1440p and says so on the chip). Files run about 420 MB a minute at 1080p60, 750 MB at 1440p60 and 1.1 GB at 4K. If a take runs well under its frame rate, the chip says so when it saves and names the change that helps: the next size down, 30 fps, or a smaller size in the output window when that window is open beside the take. That note stays up for 15 seconds so there is time to read it.

The "for socials" switch in the same folder sets a take up for Instagram and TikTok in one go. It records 30 fps, the rate Instagram plays reels at, at 1080p or the platform size, and writes about 160 MB a minute for 9:16. If the computer misses a frame it holds the last one so the timing stays even, and it tags the color the way upload apps expect, so blacks stay black after they re-encode. While the take rolls the screen draws at 30 fps too, which leaves heavy scenes room to record without a dropped frame. The quality and frame rate picks hide while it is on, since it sets both. Exports follow it too. Turn it off for YouTube and anything you edit further, where 60 fps and the bigger file are worth having. Two habits keep Instagram uploads crisp: turn on "Upload at highest quality" (Settings, then Data usage and media quality), and move clips to your phone with AirDrop or a cable. Messaging apps recompress video and soften it.

The "lock screen to 30 fps" switch in the same folder holds the live picture at a steady 30. Use it when a heavy scene or a big window keeps the counter in the 50s and you would rather have even motion than the odd missed frame. It changes only the screen: takes still record at the frame rate picked above. It stays set on this computer.

Whole sets record too. A take streams to disk while it runs rather than filling memory, so length is not the limit. The record chip counts minutes and gigabytes so you can see the take growing. Takes land with the track audio already in the file, at any length. The chip counts the sound in at the end of a long take ("adding sound" with a percentage), which takes a while on a set: the audio encodes at roughly ten times real time, so an hour of music is a few minutes of waiting. Leave the window alone until the chip says saved. If the sound cannot go into the file, the take still saves: the video and its sound land side by side as an MP4 and a WAV under the same time stamp, and the chip says "sound as WAV beside it".

Recording keeps your screen awake while it runs. In Photism Online, keep the window visible: browsers pause hidden windows, and a hidden or covered window holds its last frame until the picture is back. In the VST and the app on a Mac, covering the window during a take is fine. On Windows, keep it uncovered and not minimized. If the picture ever stalls mid-take, the record chip says so.

A take that dies is not lost. In the VST and the app, the file grows on disk as you record, with the sound in it as it happens. If the window goes dark, the DAW crashes, or the computer sleeps hard, Photism finishes the take on its own, sound included, and the next time it opens the chip names the file it saved to your Downloads folder under the take's own time stamp. The picture runs to the last two seconds before the crash. On the web, Photism writes an index of the take every ten seconds instead, and the next time it opens it finishes the take from the last index and offers it on the chip: "recovered take", with its length and size, and a save and a discard button. There the picture runs to the last index and the sound, which goes in at stop, is missing; a take whose save failed at stop keeps its sound.

On macOS 11 and 12, record and export at photism.app/online in Chrome instead of the VST or the app. Those versions of macOS run the VST and the app on the web engine built into macOS, which a Safari update leaves as it was. On macOS 12 that engine records the picture as a solid color, with the sound saved as a WAV beside it. Photism Online in Chrome records and exports there with the picture and the sound in one file.

A take keeps the frame size it started with. Reshape the window during a take and the picture letterboxes into that frame rather than stretching, so set your window and aspect before you press R.

In Photism Online and the standalone app, "export" in the bar renders the loaded track to an mp4 without playing it, the way a DAW bounces a mix. For a video of a whole song it is the sure path, however heavy the scene and however slow the machine. It draws every frame of the song at the recording settings' frame and frame rate, puts the sound in, and saves the file to your Downloads folder. With quality on auto it renders at 1080p, the fastest size; pick 1440p or 4K in the recording settings for a bigger file. Light scenes render faster than the song plays and heavy ones slower, and the control shows the time left. Press it again to stop, and what rendered so far is saved with its sound cut to match. Two exports of the same track come out the same length, frame for frame; the picture itself starts from where the visuals were when you pressed export, trails and all, so it is never quite the same twice. The automation lanes play into the file as they play live. In the standalone app on a Mac, export needs macOS 13.3 or newer (section 22).

A video can be the track. Export your edit from Premiere, Resolve or your phone with its sound in the same file, then drop the mp4 or mov on Photism while no track is loaded. Its sound is the song, and its picture plays on limitless in step with that sound, frame for frame, through play, scrubbing, the lanes and the export. Each exported frame holds the frame of your video that was on screen at that moment. The chip offers SOUND ONLY to keep the sound and leave the picture out. H.264 and HEVC videos play everywhere and hold the exact frame. ProRes pictures play in the Mac app only: they can trail the sound by a frame or two for a moment after a seek, and their export runs at half the song's speed or slower. For the tightest picture, and on Windows or in a browser, export H.264 from your editor. A video dropped while a track is already loaded loops silent on limitless, as any clip does. The Output window, and the Syphon or Spout feed it sends, shows the same picture in step with the song, as does a projector tab in Photism Online when the clip fits its 256 MB store.

16. PROJECTING LIVE

Press Shift+O in the plugin, or O in the app, to open the output window. Drag it to the projector or capture screen, then double-click it or press F. Esc leaves fullscreen. Visuals only, no chrome, and the cursor hides itself after two seconds. Keep tuning in the main window. Both stay in sync, so what you edit is what the room sees. Dropped images and clips arrive there by the shared source id.

Syphon output (Mac)

Photism sends its visuals straight into Resolume, OBS, VDMX, MadMapper, TouchDesigner and any other app that receives Syphon. Open Photism's output window (press O, or Shift+O in the plugin) and turn on Syphon in its top bar. Then pick the matching "Photism" source in your receiving app. The number after the name tells the instances apart when several are open. The status reads Sending with the frame size once video is flowing. The receiver gets the visuals only, without the window bar or the Syphon controls. Resize the window to change the frame size.

The size menu next to the toggle fixes the frame instead. Pick 1280 x 720, 1920 x 1080, 2560 x 1440, 3840 x 2160 or 1080 x 1920 and the window snaps so the receiver gets exactly that many pixels. The window stops resizing by hand while a fixed size is picked, and it can run past the edge of the display for the large sizes. On a Retina or scaled display the window itself looks smaller than the number, because each point on screen is more than one pixel in the frame. The status line shows the pixels sent, so you can confirm the size the receiver gets. Pick "window" to go back to a free window that follows your resizing. Fullscreen hides the bar and sends the whole screen; leaving fullscreen brings the fixed size back.

Syphon needs macOS 14 or later. On older systems the output window works as before and the Syphon toggle does not appear.

The first time you turn it on, macOS asks for Screen Recording access. Allow Photism for the standalone app, or your DAW for the plugin. If macOS asks you to quit and reopen, do that, open the output again and turn Syphon back on. Closing the output stops the feed. Closing only the plugin editor leaves it running.

After quitting and reopening Photism, pick its Syphon source again in the receiving app. In our Resolume test the existing clip did not reconnect on its own after a restart.

While Syphon is on, Photism keeps the displays awake. Turning it off or closing the output releases that. Putting the Mac to sleep by hand still interrupts the feed.

Syphon carries video only, on the same Mac. Audio stays where it was: the plugin listens to its track, the standalone listens to the input you picked in Audio Settings. The browser version uses its output page instead. Syphon and Spout are part of Photism at no extra charge.

Spout output (Windows, beta)

The same idea on Windows. Open Photism's output window and turn on Spout in its top bar, then pick the matching "Photism" source in Resolume, OBS, TouchDesigner or any other Spout receiver on the same PC. The number after the name tells the instances apart. The size menu works the same way as on the Mac: pick 1920 x 1080 and the receiver gets a 1920 x 1080 frame, whatever your Windows display scaling is set to.

Spout needs Windows 10 version 1903 or later, or Windows 11, with a graphics driver that supports Windows graphics capture. This is a beta. It builds and starts cleanly in our tests, and we are still collecting results from real Windows graphics cards and receivers. If it misbehaves on your machine, turn it off, keep using the output window, and tell us at hello@photism.app what card and receiver you have.

Audio stays in your DAW or in the standalone's Audio Settings. Spout carries the visuals. Closing the output stops the sender and releases the request to keep the display awake.

The standalone app remembers its output window, on the Mac and on Windows. Quit with the output open and Syphon or Spout on, and the next launch opens it in the same place, at the same size, already sending, on the look you left. That suits a fixed install where the computer shuts down at night and starts again in the morning: add Photism to the computer's startup apps and nobody has to press a key. Close the output window before quitting and the app opens without it.

Saving GPU while the output runs

With the output window open, the plugin and the standalone draw every frame twice: once in the output window and once in the main window as your preview. While the output window is open, a preview chip sits next to o · output and sets what the main window spends. Click it to step through the three settings:

preview · full

the main window renders as usual.

preview · low

half the resolution at 30 frames a second.

preview · off

a small copy twice a second, dimmed, with a line saying the output keeps running.

The output window, and the Syphon or Spout feed, look and move the same in all three. A take or a still renders the main window at full quality from start to save, then drops back to your pick. It waits about half a second at the start for the trails to build back, so the first frame looks like the rest. Closing the output window brings the full preview back at once, and the chip leaves with it. Photism remembers the pick.

The output window's size menu is the other half. It sets how many pixels the output draws and the size Syphon or Spout sends: 1920 x 1080 draws a quarter of what 3840 x 2160 does. Pick the size your receiver or projector actually uses.

17. AUTOMATING FROM THE ARRANGEMENT

In the plugin every control is a host parameter with its own name, so your DAW lists them under Photism like any synth's knobs and you draw lanes for the few that matter to a track. Moving a slider in the tuning panel moves its parameter, and a lane drawn in the DAW moves the slider. The standalone app draws its lanes over a loaded track instead (section 22).

The parameters, in the order your DAW shows them:

Scene

which visual engine is running, by name

React, Chaos, Trails, Heat, Brightness

the five big edits (section 4)

Symmetry

kaleidoscope segments, 0 is off

Lens, Lens Style

the optical material and its style: glass ribs, glass fan, anamorphic, melt, glitch, pixels, fly eye

Complexity

the active scene's detail

Palette

which of the twenty-four color sets, by name

Mode

the active scene's variant, 1 to 7: the first seven modes of the scene that is up, in the order section 10 lists them. On limitless that is none, smear, droste, infinite, corridor, cube and planet. The seven scenes with modes are limitless, vesica, limitless 3d, signal, anemone, spacetime and descent

Input Gain

source calibration (section 5)

Speed, Shape, Density

the active scene's own controls; a scene that names one in its own words shows the lane name as a chip beside it (section 13)

Fill, Tilt, Contrast

more of the scene's own controls

Twist, Spin, Slice

the vortex, the spin and the shear slabs (sections 6 and 8)

Tiles, Hue Drift, Vignette

the wallpaper grid, the palette walk and the dark edges

Sidechain

a switch kept from the Ableton build so saved sets stay valid. With nothing feeding it, it changes nothing.

Preset Slot

the whole look, by pinned slot (section 14). 0 is manual control; the lane reads the slot's name.

Decay

how long a hit holds

Open, Morph, Edge

visage: how far the face swings open, then its two face knobs

Growth, Movement, Curl, Relief

the scene controls of the newest scenes

Emblem On

whether the logo layer from section 12 shows

Emblem Opacity

how solid it is

Emblem Size

how big it is, 10 to 120

Emblem Spin

its turn, -50 to 50, 0 holding still

Emblem Pulse

how hard it answers the music, 0 to 200

Emblem Tint

palette to white, for an image emblem

Emblem Clean

the CLEAN (NO FX) switch: on top of the finished picture, past every effect

Emblem Look

a 3D emblem's look, by name: form, shatter, dust, hologram, slices, voxel

Emblem Invert

for dark logos, an image emblem only

Emblem Amount

how hard that look works the model, 0 leaving it whole

Model

limitless 3d's model, by name: knot, crystal, shell, lotus, orb, helix, dropped, skull, bust, hand. Dropped is the model you dropped in; until one arrives a built-in shows

Text Line, Text Next

the text folder's lines: pin a line, or step to the next on each rise (section 12, TEXT)

Text Opacity

how solid the text is, for fades you draw yourself

Input EQ

where the listening window sits on the spectrum, low to high. The lane slides the window and keeps the width you set in the panel (section 5)

The emblem lanes move the logo you dropped. The logo itself stays with the session, so a set reopens with its emblem settings and shows them once you drop the logo again. The model's dragged angle and Visage's eyes follow cursor stay in the panel, with no lane behind them.

Draw Scene to change engine on the drop, Palette to flip color at the bridge, Preset Slot to swap the entire look on a section. A Scene lane cuts to the new scene the instant it arrives, so a change drawn on the downbeat lands on it. Automated Symmetry, Spin and Vignette stick across scene changes, so an envelope keeps playing over whatever scene is up. Load a preset and every parameter follows it: scene, palette, mode, style and the dials all jump to the preset's values. Preset changes land the instant they arrive, tight enough to automate on a downbeat; the morph ms slider in the preset browser trades the cut for a glide of that length.

18. MIDI LEARN

MIDI learn works in Photism Online in Chrome or Edge, and in the Windows app and VST. The Mac app, the Mac VST and Audio Unit, and Safari have no MIDI access, so the midi learn row does not appear there. On a Mac, map your controller in the DAW instead: every control is a plugin parameter (section 17). In Logic, move the control, press Learn Assignment (Command-L), and turn the knob. In Ableton, click Configure on the Photism device and move the control so it shows as a parameter, then press MIDI in the top right, click that parameter, turn the knob, and press MIDI again.

Where MIDI learn runs, a hardware knob drives any control directly. Right-click a slider in the tuning panel and click midi learn at the bottom of the assign grid, then turn the knob you want. The binding shows as a small CC chip beside the slider's name. The emblem's sliders learn the same way, and the knob sweeps each one's full range: opacity, size, spin, pulse, palette to white and amount. One control per CC; learning a control onto a new knob moves it. Right-click the midi row to clear a binding. Bindings are saved on this machine and come back on the next launch. The first learn asks for MIDI access once. Moves from hardware mirror to every open Photism window and onto the plugin's parameters, exactly like turning the on-screen slider.

20. IF SOMETHING IS OFF

"waiting for audio"

The track Photism sits on is not playing audio, or the plugin is bypassed. In the app, no input is chosen: click audio in. Play the track.

"paused" or "track ended"

In Photism Online or the app's track mode, the line names the loaded track and says what it is doing. Press play, or drop another track.

Keys do nothing

In the plugin, hold shift: shift+g, shift+r, shift+tab. The app and Photism Online use the bare keys.

No Photism in the plugin list

Rescan plugins. On a Mac, run the installer again. On Windows, copy the whole Photism.vst3 folder into C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3, with its Contents folder inside it.

Windows: files missing

The window says Photism could not start its local server, because its renderer files did not come along. For the VST, copy the whole top-level Photism.vst3 folder, never the inner Contents\x86_64-win\Photism.vst3 file by itself. For the app, right-click the zip, choose Extract All, and open Photism.exe from the extracted folder with Resources beside it. Opening Photism.exe from inside the zip runs it without those files.

Blank plugin window

On Windows, install Microsoft Edge WebView2 from Microsoft and reopen (section 22).

Windows SmartScreen

The app can pause there the first time. Click More info, then Run anyway.

Smart App Control

Windows can turn Smart App Control on by itself some time after a fresh install, and from then on it blocks apps it has not seen before, each new build of Photism included. Turn it off in Windows Security, App & browser control, Smart App Control settings, then open Photism again.

No microphone or camera on Windows

In Windows Settings, open Privacy & security, then Microphone, and turn on "Let desktop apps access your microphone". Camera has the same switch under Camera. Close other apps that hold the camera, then reopen Photism.

Slow on a Windows PC

A laptop with two graphics chips can hand Photism the weaker one. In Settings, open System, Display, Graphics, add Photism.exe for the app or your DAW for the plugin, set it to High performance, and restart it. Plug the laptop in. With the output window open, the preview chip turns the main window down (section 16).

A take is choppy

The record chip names the fix when the take saves: 1080p or 30 fps in the tuning panel's recording settings (G), or a smaller size in the output window. For a video of a whole song, drop the track on the app or Photism Online and press export. It renders every frame, so nothing drops (section 15). A DAW's own video export, such as Live's Export Audio/Video, cannot capture Photism.

A take stopped early

Closing the plugin window ends a rolling take. Keep it open until the chip says saved. On a Mac, covering it with other windows is fine. On Windows, keep it uncovered and not minimized.

macOS 11 or 12 takes

On macOS 12 a take from the VST or the app comes out solid red. On macOS 11 and 12, record and export at photism.app/online in Chrome (section 15).

Fullscreen

Drag the output window to the second screen, then double-click it or press F. Esc leaves fullscreen.

No MIDI learn on a Mac

The Mac app, VST and Audio Unit have no MIDI access. Map the controller in your DAW instead, with Logic's Learn Assignment or Ableton's MIDI Map (section 18).

No download email, or the wrong email

Go to photism.app/redownload and enter the email you bought with; the link is sent again. Paid with Apple Pay or Link? Your purchase is under the email that wallet holds. Stripe's receipt shows it.

Updating

Open your download link again and install the new build over the old one. Updates are free, and presets survive the reinstall. The guide at photism.app/learn/how-to-update-photism has the steps for each format.

Black screen after a moment

The page reloads itself after a GPU hiccup. Give it a second.

A slider does nothing

That is a bug. Tell us, and name the slider.

When none of these fits, send the startup log (section 22, Support) to hello@photism.app with what you were doing.

21. FLASHING LIGHTS AND PHOTOSENSITIVITY

Photism is built to hit hard. Kicks push bloom through the structure, scenes tear and strobe, and a hot preset on a loud track flashes fast. That is the point, and it is also a real hazard for some people.

Roughly one in four thousand people has photosensitive epilepsy, where flashing light or high-contrast moving patterns can trigger a seizure. Many of them have never had one and do not know they are susceptible. Flash rates between about 5 and 30 per second are the most provocative, and a large bright screen in a dark room is the worst case. A projector at a show is exactly that.

WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU PLAY TO A ROOM

Say it up front. A line on the door, on the event page, or from the stage covers it: "this set includes flashing lights and strobe effects." Venues often have a house policy, ask them.

Watch the room. If someone looks unwell, stop the visuals first and bring the house lights up.

If someone has a seizure, get medical help immediately. Do not restrain them, do not put anything in their mouth, and clear space around them until help arrives.

TURNING THE INTENSITY DOWN

Every one of these is a live control, so you can soften a look without leaving the scene.

HEAT

Bloom and flash. This is the biggest single lever. Low HEAT removes most of the hard flashing.

REACT

How hard the music drives the picture. Low REACT lets the scene drift instead of snapping on every hit.

BRIGHTNESS Exposure. Lower it and the whole frame calms down.

DECAY

Down for busy music. Hits clear faster, so the picture breathes between them instead of staying lit.

TRAILS

Up, not down. Long persistence smears fast changes into motion rather than leaving them as discrete flashes.

The calmest scenes are the slow structural ones: relic, citadel, sand, morphogen. The signal meters and the glitch lens style are the fastest and the most strobing. If you need a set that is safe for a mixed audience by default, build your presets from the slow scenes with HEAT low and TRAILS high, and pin them to slots.

WHAT PHOTISM DOES NOT DO

Photism has no automatic flash limiter and does not measure its output against the WCAG or Harding flash thresholds. It renders what you tune it to render. Judging what is safe for your audience is your call, and these controls are how you make it.

22. PHOTISM AS A PLUGIN

Photism also ships as a plugin: a VST3 and an Audio Unit for any DAW, and a standalone app that needs no DAW at all. Same scenes, same palettes, same controls. The plugin window is the visualizer.

Install

On macOS, run the installer: it places Photism.app in Applications and the VST3 and Audio Unit in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins, where your DAW picks them up on the next plugin rescan. macOS asks for your password once to install for all users. It is signed and notarized. On Windows, unzip Photism.vst3 into C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3 and rescan.

Standalone

On Windows, download the standalone zip, choose Extract All, and open Photism.exe. Keep Resources beside the executable. On either platform, click audio in to choose your microphone or audio interface.

Computer audio

In Audio Settings, tick "Listen to what's playing on this computer" and the app hears whatever the computer is playing: Spotify, a YouTube tab, a clip in Resolume. No cable, no Stereo Mix, no BlackHole. It listens to the output device your computer sends sound to and follows it when you switch outputs. While it is on, the input device below the tick box is ignored. Untick it to go back to your microphone or interface. On a Mac it needs macOS 14.2 or later; on older systems the tick box is greyed out and says so. The first time you tick it, macOS may ask whether Photism can record system audio. Click Allow. Your input device keeps driving the visuals until something plays, and the first sound hands them over. If you clicked Don't Allow, the line under the tick box tells you where to turn it back on: System Settings, Privacy & Security, System Audio Recording.

Tracks

The standalone plays a track the way photism.app/online does. Drop an mp3, wav, m4a, aiff or flac anywhere on the window, or click track in the corner strip and pick one. A video with its sound works too: its picture plays on limitless in step with the song (section 15). A player bar opens along the bottom with the automation lanes above it, and the track starts playing. Space plays and pauses, and R records a take with the track's sound. Drag along the waveform to move through the song: the music holds while you drag and plays on from where you let go. While a track is loaded the visuals follow it and your input waits. The x beside the track's name unloads it, and the app listens to your input again.

Lanes

Click + lane and draw a curve for a scene, preset, palette, macro, fx or emblem control. The lanes play with the track, and the output window follows them. The scene you are in has its own group in the + lane menu, in that scene's words, and a lane the scene does not use dims until a scene that does comes on. Limitless 3d's model lane sits in that group. The emblem lanes move the logo you dropped: on, opacity, size, spin, pulse, tint, clean, look, invert and amount. The text lanes turn the words on and off and fade them, to clear the screen for a break with no vocals. Right-click a control in the tune panel and pick automate to open its lane straight away. The z key shows or hides the lanes. Lanes save as you draw, and the same track dropped again brings them back. The arrows in the lanes header save the project to Downloads as a file and open one. A new lane starts at the value on screen, so adding one leaves the picture as it is. A control a lane drives turns amber in the tune panel and wears an auto tag. Drag it and the lane waits; let go and the lane takes it back.

Export

Export in the bar renders the whole track to an mp4 in Downloads without playing it, with the sound and the lanes in the file. It uses the frame, frame rate and quality in the tune panel's recording settings; on auto it renders 1080p. The control counts the percent done and the time left. Press it again to stop, and what rendered so far is saved with its sound cut to match. Section 15 has the rest. On a Mac, export in the app needs macOS 13.3 or newer. The app draws with the web engine built into macOS, and a Safari update leaves that engine as it was. On macOS 11 and 12, export the track at photism.app/online in Chrome. On an older macOS the export control says so.

Keys

Hotkeys in the plugin take shift: shift+tab opens the scene grid, shift+g opens the controls, shift+r records, shift+s saves a still, shift+o opens an output window. Shift keeps the keys clear of notes when your DAW plays the computer keyboard as MIDI. Fullscreen lives in the output window: double-click it or press F there. The standalone app uses the bare keys.

Recording

A take records with the sound in the file, at any length. At the end of a long take the chip counts the sound in; leave the window alone until it says saved. On macOS 11 and 12 the VST and the app cannot record a usable picture, so record and export at photism.app/online in Chrome there. Section 15 has the rest.

Presets

The VST, the Audio Unit, and the standalone app share one preset library per user account. photism.app keeps its own; the preset library folder in the tune panel moves a library between them.

Windows

The standalone may pause on SmartScreen the first time: More info, then Run anyway. The plugin window uses Microsoft Edge WebView2, which Windows 11 and most Windows 10 machines already have. A blank window means WebView2 is missing; install the runtime from Microsoft and reopen.

Version

In the standalone, click audio in: the version and build run along the bottom of the Audio Settings window. On a Mac, About Photism in the Photism menu shows them too. Put both in any note to support.

Support

The plugin window and the standalone app keep a startup log. On macOS it is ~/Library/Application Support/Photism/ plugin.log, on Windows %APPDATA%\Photism\plugin.log. It names the build, the page load, and in the standalone the audio input it opened, with the microphone permission on macOS. If the picture and controls drop out to black, the window brings them back by itself within a few seconds, on the same look. With a take rolling it saves the take to Downloads first, which takes about a minute. If a dropped video stops it again right after, the video comes off so the window stays up. If a window stays dark, send that file to hello@photism.app. The Mac App Store build keeps its log in ~/Library/Containers/app.photism.mac/Data/Library/ Application Support/Photism/plugin.log.

EDITING A LANE

• Click an empty spot to add a breakpoint. Two breakpoints make a straight ramp, so a diagonal is two clicks. Clicks catch the beat grid; hold Cmd (Ctrl on Windows) to place one off it.
• Drag a breakpoint to move it, holding Alt for fine steps. Double-click it to delete it.
• Drag the handle in the middle of a segment, or Alt-drag anywhere on it, to bend it. Double-click a bent segment to straighten it.
• Shift-click breakpoints, or Shift-drag a box around them, to select a group. Drag one to move them all, and Delete removes them.
• Cmd-Z undoes (Ctrl-Z on Windows), Shift-Cmd-Z redoes. Cmd-scroll or a pinch zooms, Shift-scroll pans, and = and - zoom about the playhead.

REMOVING PHOTISM

On a Mac, drag Photism.app out of Applications to the Trash, then remove Photism.vst3 from /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3, Photism.component from /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components, and the shared renderer folder /Library/Application Support/Photism. macOS asks for your password for the /Library folders. On Windows, delete the Photism.vst3 folder from C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3 and the folder you extracted the app into. Your presets, the startup log and any take in progress live apart from the program, in ~/Library/Application Support/Photism on a Mac and in %APPDATA%\Photism and %LOCALAPPDATA%\Photism on Windows. Leave them and a reinstall picks up where you were. Delete them too to remove everything, after Save library to file if you want the presets back one day.

KNOWN LIMITS, PLAINLY

Closing the plugin window ends a rolling take. The DAW destroys the window and the recording lives inside it. Keep the window open while a take rolls. On a Mac, covering it with other windows is fine. On Windows, keep it uncovered and not minimized.

Two Photism instances drawing at once share your GPU, and frame rate drops with the second window open. One instance with the output window on your second display is the smooth way to run a show.

Getting help

Anything that looks wrong, or any control that does nothing you can see, is worth reporting. Email hello@photism.app and name the control.

Photism will never email you asking for a payment, a password, or a command to run in a terminal. A message like that did not come from us, whatever address it appears to be from.