Frosted Glass
Diffuse source detail behind privacy glass with haze, shimmer, and grazing highlights.
Add Frosted Glass
Open an image or build the source composition first. Put this effect after the content it should process in stack processing order. Choose Material → Glass → Frosted Glass in the effects picker, or search for Frosted Glass with Cmd/Ctrl + F. Select the new layer in Layers to open its Effect Panel.
Set the diffusion
Increase Blur and Haze to obscure source detail. Scale and Grain set the texture of the frosted surface.
Light the material
Use Refraction for subtle displacement and Roughness, Specular and Light Angle for the surface highlights. Anisotropy changes their directional character.
Compare and finish
Toggle the layer eye to compare with the incoming composition. Use the Effect Panel footer for opacity and blend mode, or add a mask to limit the affected area. In Video or Live, use the function menu on a supported control to add keyframes or a driver.
Control reference
Show individual controls
| Control | What it does | Values and animation |
|---|---|---|
| Ambient | minimum light level on shaded frosted normals | 0 to 1 Default: 0.62 Continuous keyframes |
| Anisotropy | directional stretch of the diffusion and grain | 0% to 100% Default: 20% Continuous keyframes |
| Blur | radius of the privacy-glass diffusion | 0 to 20 %; 1 to 500 px (typed input: 1 to 2000) Default: 2.2 % Continuous keyframes |
| Scale | feature size of the frosted etch pattern | 0 to 20 %; 1 to 500 px (typed input: 1 to 2000) Default: 2 % Continuous keyframes |
| Grain | contrast of the visible etched grain | 0% to 100% Default: 55% Continuous keyframes |
| Haze | milky privacy veil blended through the glass | 0% to 100% Default: 5% Continuous keyframes |
| Frosted Light Angle | direction of the key light over the frosted surface | 0 to 360 Default: 135 Continuous keyframes |
| Refraction | how far etched micro-normals bend the source image | 0 to 50 %; 0 to 256 px (typed input: 0 to 2000) Default: 10 % Continuous keyframes |
| Roughness | height of the etched micro-normal surface | 0 to 1 Default: 0.62 Continuous keyframes |
| Specular | strength of grazing shimmer highlights | 0 to 1 Default: 0.08 Continuous keyframes |
| Seed | change for a different random pattern | 0 to 9999 Default: 0 Discrete keyframes |