Boris FX Sapphire Plug-ins

Overview

Sapphire is not an application. It is a library of effects that installs into the applications you already run, and it has been the default answer to the question of where a glow, a lens flare or a believable film look comes from since long before any of the current editing packages existed. The name shows up in the credits of a large share of broadcast graphics work for the simple reason that its output holds up on a large screen where cheaper filters fall apart.

The package covers over two hundred effects grouped into families. Lighting effects handle glows, rays, flares and light leaks with optical modelling rather than a blurred copy of the source. Blur and sharpen covers everything from simple defocus to bokeh with shaped iris blades and edge aware sharpening. Stylise carries the looks that get asked for by name, including film stocks, print emulation, halftone, cartoon and duotone treatments. Distort and warp includes the ripples, wobbles and lens deformations used for transitions and for screen damage.

Beyond the individual effects there are the composite tools that make the difference on real jobs. The transition set includes a large collection of preset wipes and dissolves built from the same effect engine, so a transition can be pulled apart and rebuilt rather than accepted as it comes. The Mocha planar tracker is included and integrated, which means an effect can be pinned to a moving surface, a sign, a phone screen or a face, without hand keyframing a mask across a hundred frames.

Everything is GPU accelerated, and the rendering path was rewritten for the current generation of cards so an effect stack that used to force a prerender now plays back at a usable rate in the timeline. The preset browser is the other practical piece: every effect ships with a large set of starting points, previewed as thumbnails on your own frame, so building a look starts from something usable rather than from every parameter at zero.

Key Features

• Over two hundred effects covering lighting, blur, stylise, distort, texture, render and composite families
• Host plugins for the common editing, compositing and image applications, all included in one installer
• Mocha planar tracking integrated so effects and masks follow a moving surface
• Preset browser with thumbnail previews rendered on your own frame
• Transition collection built on the same effect engine and fully editable
• Optically modelled lens flares with editable element chains rather than fixed stamps
• Film and print emulation looks including grain, halation and stock response
• GPU accelerated rendering with a rewritten path for current generation cards
• Keyframeable parameters throughout with host native curve editing
• Effect stacking inside a single plugin instance to avoid a tower of separate filters

What Changed in This Build

• New effects added across the lighting and texture families
• Faster GPU render path with lower memory pressure on 4K and larger frames
• Preset browser rebuilt to load thumbnails without stalling the host
• Improved planar track stability on low contrast surfaces

System Requirements

Processor	Intel or AMD 64-bit, 6 cores or more recommended
Memory	16 GB minimum, 32 GB for 4K work
Graphics	GPU with 4 GB VRAM minimum, 8 GB or more recommended
Storage	6 GB free for the full install with presets
Host	A supported editing, compositing or image application already installed

Release Details

Full title	Boris FX Sapphire Plug-ins
Version string	2026.51
Publisher	Boris FX
Category	Video Editing
Licence	Full version, all host plugins included
Platform	Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit
Interface language	English
Archive size	2.24 GB
Mirrors	4 active, all reporting online
Listed	refreshed 1 month ago, checked again 40 minutes ago

Installation Notes

• Install your host applications first. The plugin installer detects what is on the machine and only offers the hosts it finds.
• If you add a host later, run the installer again rather than copying plugin files by hand.
• Render tests on a short section before committing a long timeline. Effect stacks are heavier than they look at preview resolution.

Before You Start

Read the notes above before running setup. Most of the problems people write in about are covered there, and almost all of them come down to an older version of the same software still being installed, a graphics driver that predates the release, or a security suite quarantining part of the package mid install.

There is no archive password on this or any other entry in the library. If something you downloaded elsewhere claims to come from here and asks for one, it did not come from here. Nothing on this site is behind a survey, a shortener or a countdown either.

If the entry does not match what the page describes, say so on the contact page and include the version string from the release details table. Reports naming a specific version get checked first because the checker can reproduce them straight away.

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