Create Beautiful Kaleidoscope Patterns with After Effects

Image by Codify Design Studio.

Create an endless number of patterns and textures, from any image, using the CC Kaleida effect in Adobe After Effects.

Start from any image, even a boring one!

Start a new project in After Effects and click the New Composition From Footage button to import a photo. This will, in turn, import the image, create a new composition, and place the image on a layer in the composition’s timeline (as shown in Figure 1).

Open the Effects & Presets panel and search for the CC Kaleida effect. Click and drag the effect to the photo in the Composition panel.

Exploring the CC Kaleida effect

The default CC Kaleida effect settings produce a pattern with the center point in the center of the photo, and a Mirroring style set to Flower. One of the first settings you may want to adjust is the mirroring. This setting controls how the tile sizes are reflected over the course of the entire image. Combine these changes with the tile size to create vastly different patterns form the same image (as shown in Figure 2).

The remaining two settings in this effect are the center point and the rotation. The center point allows you to adjust the region of the image that generates the kaleidoscope effect. The rotation setting lets you rotate the area of the tile being sampled from the photo (as shown in Figure 3).

Combine the center, rotation, size, and mirroring settings in the CC Kaleida effect to create an endless number of patterns from a single image.

Learn even more techniques for enhancing photographs with After Effects

Looking to add a little “something extra” to a stock photo? Or reimagine a less-than-stellar photo? Join us for a completely new way to augment and stylize your photography.

Watch the recording of After Effects for Photography, which includes:

Adobe Creative Cloud e-learning series

After Effects for Photography