ChromaBlenderizer

Ramp a color range across any set of selected color properties — pick Start and End colors, select fills, strokes, or effect colors, and apply a linear blend or random scatter in one click.

Category: effects · Version: 2.3.1 · UI: PALETTE (modeless — stays open while you work)

What it does

ChromaBlenderizer distributes a color range across After Effects color properties so you don't hand-pick a color for every shape fill, stroke, or effect color control. Set a Start color and an End color — via the bundled color-wheel picker or HSB sliders — select two or more color property rows anywhere in the Timeline or Effect Controls, and click Apply Colors. Each selected property receives one color along the interpolation path between Start and End (or a random color inside that range).

The palette is modeless by design: adjust colors, go re-select different properties in AE, click Refresh Count to confirm the palette sees them, apply again — repeatedly, without relaunching. Two modes shape the blend: Color Gamut walks hue (always the shortest way around the color wheel), a shared saturation, and per-endpoint brightness; Grayscale ignores hue/saturation and interpolates brightness only. The Randomize Colors checkbox swaps the even linear spread for an independent random position per property, still bounded by your Start/End range.

Color picking is handled by a vendored, self-contained copy of the AdobeColorPicker v2.0 color wheel — no dependency on Duik or any external picker. The tool writes values directly with setValue(); it adds no expressions, effects, or keyframes.

Controls & options

What counts as a target: properties whose value type is COLOR — shape Fill Color, shape Stroke Color, effect Color controls, text animator colors. Selecting layers is not enough; the actual color property rows must be highlighted, and you need at least two.

Usage

1. Open a composition and run the script (with no active comp it alerts and exits before the palette opens).
2. Click the Start swatch and pick a color on the wheel (or drag the HSB sliders). Repeat for End.
3. Choose Grayscale or Color Gamut; optionally enable Randomize Colors.
4. In AE, select two or more color property rows — the palette stays open while you do.
5. Click Refresh Count to confirm the target count reads at least 2.
6. Click Apply Colors. The status line reports how many properties were written.
7. Change colors or selection and apply again as often as you like; Close when done.

Notes

• With everything at defaults (Start = End = white, saturation 0), applying writes plain white to every target — set your colors first.
• Hue interpolation always takes the shortest path around the wheel, so a red→magenta ramp goes through violet, not all the way around through green.
• setValue() writes the property's current value: on properties with existing keyframes this changes the value at the current time; it doesn't add keyframes of its own.
• Only one ChromaBlenderizer palette can exist — relaunching the script closes a leftover palette from a previous run first.
• If the bundled color picker fails to load, the swatch buttons tell you to use the HSB sliders instead — the tool keeps working without the wheel.

Requirements & edge cases

• After Effects CS6 or later.
• Requires an active composition — checked before the palette opens and again at apply time (the comp can close while the modeless palette stays open).
• Requires at least two selected COLOR-type properties; fewer triggers an alert and nothing is written.
• Per-property write failures are caught individually and counted; the rest of the batch still applies, and the status line reports "Applied to N properties; M failed."
• The bundled picker remembers its screen position in a small file under Folder.userData/Aescripts/colorPicker/ — this needs AE's "Allow Scripts to Write Files and Access Network" preference, like any script that writes to disk.

How it works

One self-invoking function. At launch it eval()s the embedded AdobeColorPicker v2.0 source (the bulk of the file — the picker ships with its color-wheel PNG escaped into the string), carefully saving and restoring any pre-existing $.global.colorPicker so it can't clobber another tool's picker. After an active-comp guard, it builds the Window('palette'), closes any stale palette registered on $.global.ChromaBlenderizerPalette, and stores the new one there so event handlers survive after the script returns.

The color math is standard fractional HSB↔RGB conversion plus interpolateHue(), which folds the hue delta into [−0.5, 0.5] before applying the ratio — that's what guarantees shortest-path travel around the wheel. Target discovery filters comp.selectedProperties down to PropertyValueType.COLOR (inside try/catch so exotic selections are skipped, not fatal); the count refreshes on Refresh Count clicks and whenever the palette regains focus via onActivate.

Apply re-checks the comp and target count, then opens the 'ChromaBlenderizer' undo group and loops the targets: ratio i/(n−1) for the linear spread (or fresh Math.random() per property when randomizing), hsbToRgb(...) per mode, and setValue([r,g,b,1]) inside a per-property try/catch. A finally block guarantees the undo group closes exactly once regardless of how the loop exits.