Light Leaks
Light leaks for photos and video: soft glows drift in from the edges like a film camera with a failing seal. Choose up to six colors and export a GIF or MP4.
What is a light leak?
A light leak is a gap in a camera body that lets stray light reach the film and fog part of the frame with a soft glow. On 35 mm cameras it often comes from the film door, where the light-seal foam wears out.
It usually counts as a fault. The lomography movement loves leaks for the character they give a photo, though, and people add them to digital photos and video for the same reason.
How to add light leaks to a photo or video
Intensity, up to 1.5, sets how strong the leaked light is, and Size sets each patch's size as a share of the frame height. Edge pushes the patches out toward the borders or pulls them in toward the middle.
Drift sets how fast they wander, and the Still preset switches it off. Colours holds up to six colors, with Warm, Golden, Cool, Pink and Red sets to start from. The Golden hour, Cool and Burn presets pair those colors with a strength that suits them.
Settings for expired film, a music video and a pastel fashion shot
Expired film: Golden hour at Intensity 1, with Edge 0.9 and Size 0.6. Small warm patches pinned to the borders look like a camera that let light in around its film door.
Music video flashes: Burn, with its red and orange at Intensity 1.3 and Size 1.1, and Drift raised to 1.2 so the light rolls across the frame.
Pastel fashion still: the Pink colors at Intensity 0.5, Size 1.2 and Edge 0.5. Big, faint patches lift the whole picture toward pink without hiding the clothes.
Do light leaks darken any part of the picture?
No. The glow goes on with a screen blend, and a screen blend only brightens: dark areas lift toward the leak's color and white stays white.
That's also why a leak barely shows on a bright, overexposed photo, while the same settings look much stronger on a dark frame. Bloom Effect grows its glow out of the picture's own highlights.
Why does my fifth or sixth color never show up?
There are always four patches, and each one takes the next color in the list, so a fifth or sixth color never gets drawn. The default Warm set has three colors, which means its first color comes back on the fourth patch.
Seed decides where each patch sits, so try a few Seeds to shuffle the colors around the frame. The same Seed gives you the same leaks on every export.
Saving a light leak loop
Each patch wanders at its own pace, so the arrangement never comes back exactly and a looping GIF jumps at the seam. Set Drift to 0 with the Still preset, or fade the end into the start with Seamless loop in the video export settings.
The glow is a soft gradient over the whole frame. A GIF can band it, while MP4 or WebM keep it smooth.