Free Final Cut Pro plug-in: Alex4D Shadow effect

This Final Cut Pro X effect adds shadows to clips with transparent areas (or clips scaled down using Alex4D Curve Scale). It has an on-screen control that sets position and blurriness:

Drag the centre of the control to choose the position of the shadow, drag the outer circle to increase or decrease the softness of the shadow.

It also has the option to create ‘internal’ shadows:

You can also scale the shadow to create subtle perspective effects.

Here are the controls:

Note that Final Cut Pro X effects cannot extend graphics outside the original size of the clip they are applied to.

If you want a full-size clip to have an external shadow, you need to scale it down within the clip using another effect, or scale it down, turn it into a compound clip and apply the Alex4D Shadow effect to the compound clip.

Installation

Download this disk image:

It includes an installation script for Spherico’s Motion Template Tool application, if you don’t have it on your Mac, download it. It is a freeware/donationware tool that simplifies effects installation for Final Cut Pro X users. MTT installs effects in the correct folders, creating them if need be. You don’t need to have Motion 5 installed for for these effects to work.

Once you have MTT installed on your computer, double-click the ‘Install Alex4D Shadow 1.0.mtt’ file.

If you don’t want to use MTT, install these effects in Home / Movies / Motion Templates / Effects / Alex4D: