Fxhome EffectsLab Pro review

Making your own videos is great fun, but if you're not George Lucas, you might find it a bit difficult to afford your own special effects company.

Help is at hand though, in the guise of Fxhome's EffectsLab Pro. This application's sole purpose is to digitally create special effects such as lightning, explosions, lightsaber battles and smoke. This is mainly achieved with animated image generators, which you can lay over the top of your chosen video clips, but EffectsLab's toolbox is also capable of less adventurous effects such as colour correction, blur and distortion.

The most fun tool in EffectsLab's armory is its particle generator. This allows you to add a wide selection of visual effects ranging from clouds of smoke to splattering blood. To achieve this, you must first choose a bitmap image or particle and decide where you want it to be emitted from in the video frame. You can choose how often and how quickly these particles are created, as well as their size and which direction they're moving in. Gravity and momentum are also taken into account, so the effects can be surprisingly realistic. It's certainly slightly daunting at first, but a little perseverance will soon have you creating good-looking results.

If you're trying to recreate a gunfight, then the Muzzle Flashes effect is indispensable. This recreates the rapid burst of light as a gun is fired and also allows you to guide a virtual bullet in three dimensions. Other tools emulate neon lights or light flares and the range of options is as wide, and initially daunting, as those of the particle generator. Thankfully, each tool has its own range of presets, so if you won't be forced to recreate every effect from scratch each time you need it.

Making your own movie might sound adventurous, but with programs like EffectsLab it's not as difficult as you'd think. It takes time to master, but unless you fancy selling the house in the hope of commissioning George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic to do your effects for you, it's all you'll need.