The Photism manual

1. THE TWO WINDOWS

Photism serves two pages from the same address, and they stay in sync.

localhost:7071

the control page. Panel, scene names in the corner, keyboard shortcuts, image drops. This is where you tune.

localhost:7071/?output

the output page. Visuals only. No menu, no overlays, no cursor after two seconds. This is the one you send to a projector or a capture card.

Open the control page on your laptop, put the output page on the second screen, and drive both from one place. The device's OPEN VISUALS button always points at the right port. If you run more than one instance, each device gets its own port, counting up from 7071.

2. KEYBOARD REFERENCE

Everything plays from the keyboard on the control page.

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, and limitless 3d 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.

R

Start or stop recording a clip.

S

Save a full-resolution still (PNG).

D

Toggle the debug overlay (frame rate, audio bands, exposure). Handy when you want to see what the engine hears.

The output page 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.

Click the panel's title row to fold the tune rows away and save room; 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. You reach them, and every other control, through the device's sixteen macro knobs (section 17).

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.

BRIGHT

Exposure. The engine already auto-exposes to keep the picture from clipping or going muddy; BRIGHT is your offset on top of that, roughly 0.6x to 2.4x.

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.

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. 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 device dial 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 are dropdowns on the device, not dials. Click one and pick by name 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. Five scenes use it: limitless has twenty-one modes, limitless 3d has six, signal has five, anemone has four patterns, and spacetime has two directions. 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-FOUR SCENES

Each scene is its own engine with its own reaction to the music. Kicks cause structural change in every one of them, not just a flash. 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 ones Alec reaches for first at the top:

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. Lower it and the effect eases back out toward your untouched picture, so you can sit anywhere from the plain image to the full mode. On the warp modes the warp itself grows in from nothing; the others ease in over the picture. It hides in none, which is already the plain picture, and in terrain, which has no flat image to fade to.

Your picture keeps its own colors in every mode. 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. 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 lane on the device, 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 framing 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.

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, not just 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.

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, open the tune panel and click CLEAR PHOTO under image · photo. 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.

Switch to scene 4 (limitless) after dropping a photo to see it drive the picture directly.

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.

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 device 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 device, 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.

In the device, 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.

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 64. 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.

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.

The Max for Live device keeps its own library in a file next to the device, so that one travels with the device folder.

photism.app keeps a third, in the browser.

Those three do not sync with each other, and none of them follow 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. 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.

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. Keep the Photism window visible: browsers pause hidden windows, and a hidden or covered window holds its last frame until the picture is back. If that ever happens 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.

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. 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 Safari 16.4 or newer (section 22).

16. PROJECTING LIVE

Put localhost:7071/?output on the projector or capture screen and go fullscreen. Visuals only, no chrome, and the cursor hides itself after two seconds. Tune from the device inside Live, or from a plain localhost:7071 page on your laptop. Both stay in sync with the output window, 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 Max for Live device and the browser version use the projector 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 projector output page, and tell us at [email protected] 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.

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

The device is sixteen macro knobs plus five selectors, and every one is a real Live parameter you draw like any synth automation.

A macro drives whatever you map it to. To assign one, right-click any slider in the tuning panel and pick a macro from the grid, or use the device macros folder in the panel. A control lives on one macro at a time, so assigning it to a knob pulls it off any other knob. Each knob's caption on the device leads with its number and names what it drives, so it lines up with the number you pick in the grid, and the caption follows the scene (a macro on the signal meters reads "ghost hold" there and "density" elsewhere). The Live lane stays named MACRO 1 through MACRO 16, so the mapping is stored in Photism and the caption tells you what a lane does.

The controls you can map onto a macro:

REACT, CHAOS, TRAILS, HEAT, BRIGHT

the five big edits

DECAY

how long a hit holds

INPUT GAIN

source calibration

SYMMETRY, TILES, TWIST, SLICE

frame transforms

LENS

the optical material

SPIN, HUE DRIFT, VIGNETTE

drift and edges

SPEED, SHAPE, COMPLEXITY, DENSITY, FILL, TILT, OPEN, MORPH, EDGE, CONTRAST

the active scene's own controls

The five selectors sit beside the macros as dropdowns, each automatable. Pick by name from the list; the Live lane still records the choice.

SCENE, PALETTE, MODE, LENS STYLE

which scene, colors, variant, lens material

PRESET

the whole look, by pinned slot

Draw SCENE to change engine on the drop, PALETTE to flip color at the bridge, PRESET to swap the entire look on a section. Automated SYMMETRY, SPIN and VIGNETTE stick across scene changes, so an envelope keeps playing over whatever scene is up. Load a preset and the macro knobs, scene, palette, mode and style all follow it.

MIDI LEARN

A hardware knob can drive any of the same controls directly, without an Ableton macro in between. 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, next to the M chip if the control also sits on a device macro. 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 the browser for MIDI access once. Moves from hardware mirror to every open Photism page and onto the device dials, exactly like turning the on-screen slider.

18. THE SIDECHAIN DEVICE

The folder carries a second device, Photism Sidechain.amxd. Drop it on any track, flip the SIDECHAIN toggle on the main device, and Photism follows that track's clean signal for one job, instead of guessing that job from the whole mix. The main device keeps doing everything else. Audio passes through untouched.

CONTROLS

What the fed track drives. Four choices, and the line under the menu says it in a sentence.

hits

Big hits follow this track. Put it on your kick and every structural hit lands with it, ghost notes soft, accents full. Mute the track and the hits stop.

accents

Small hits follow this track. The second rhythm line: snare, claps, rim.

bass

Low-end swell follows this track. Warp, billow and depth ride its level.

brightness

Overall glow follows this track. The whole picture leans toward whatever you feed it, a lead, a vocal, anything with a shape.

SENS

Input trim for quiet sources. Center is right for most tracks. Double-click resets.

Both are Live parameters. The automation lanes read SIDECHAIN ROLE and SIDECHAIN SENS, so a role change can be drawn into the arrangement like anything else.

Drop as many as you want, one per role. The control page's status line lists what is connected, "sidechain hits+bass". The SIDECHAIN toggle on the main device, under the PRESET dropdown, is the master switch for every feed. It ships off, so Photism listens to its own audio until you flip it on, and you can hear both ways with one click. It is a Live parameter, so the flip automates. With the toggle off or no Sidechain devices in the set, nothing changes at all.

20. IF SOMETHING IS OFF

"waiting for audio"

The track the device sits on is not playing audio, or the device is off. Play the track.

"device disconnected"

Reopen the browser page. The device's OPEN VISUALS button always points at the right address.

Black screen after a moment

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

Port conflicts

Photism walks up from 7071 automatically, so each device instance gets its own port.

A slider does nothing

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

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.

BRIGHT

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 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 in it. 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 or fx 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. 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.

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 needs Safari 16.4 or newer: the app draws with the Mac's own web engine, which updates with Safari. macOS 13.3 and later have it already. On macOS 11 and 12, update Safari in Software Update. With an older Safari, export says it needs a newer one.

Keys

Hotkeys in the plugin take shift: shift+tab cycles scenes, 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 routes the keyboard as an instrument. 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.

Presets

The VST, the Audio Unit, and the standalone app share one preset library per user account. The Ableton device and photism.app keep their 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.

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 a window stays dark, send that file to [email protected].

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; covering it with other windows is fine.

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 [email protected] 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.