# Visual Effects

Exaplay 3 includes a GPU-accelerated effects pipeline powered by the **Effects Server** — a Node.js process that manages shader state and broadcasts changes to the rendering engine via WebSocket.

## Available Effects

### Color Keying

Remove a specific colour from a layer (e.g. green screen).

| Parameter      | Description                                         |
| -------------- | --------------------------------------------------- |
| `keyColor`     | RGB colour to remove (hex or picker)                |
| `tolerance`    | How closely a pixel must match the key colour (0–1) |
| `edgeSoftness` | Blend at the edges of the keyed region (0–1)        |

### Luminance Adjustment

Non-destructive brightness, contrast, and gamma correction.

| Parameter    | Range       | Default |
| ------------ | ----------- | ------- |
| `brightness` | -1.0 to 1.0 | 0.0     |
| `contrast`   | -1.0 to 1.0 | 0.0     |
| `gamma`      | 0.1 to 4.0  | 1.0     |

### Custom Shader Uniforms

Any GLSL uniform value can be driven in real time via the `/uniform` endpoint. This is used for custom effects developed in Notch or other GLSL-based tools.

## Applying Effects

### Via the Inspector

1. Select a clip in the Timeline.
2. In the Inspector, scroll to the **Effects** section.
3. Click **+ Effect** and choose an effect type.
4. Adjust the parameters using the sliders.

### Via the API

Effects can also be applied programmatically using the Effects Server REST API. See the [Effects Server API](/v3/developer-reference/effects-server-api.md) reference.

![Effects inspector section](/files/sJhdREx054Kemvcu8hYu)

## Effect Performance

All effects are applied as fragment shader passes on the GPU — they add negligible latency and do not affect the decode pipeline. Multiple effects can be stacked on a single clip.

## Removing Effects

* Select the effect in the Inspector and click the **× Remove** button.
* Or send `DELETE /effects/colorkey` (or `/effects/luminance`) to the Effects Server API.


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