make it glow for real

tl;dr make it glow plugin

since i’ve been unemployed for a moment i was browsing the internet as a regular person does and noticed one company on linkedin with a glowing logo on my macbook. this intrigued me quite a lot. i’d say more than it would ever be expected. this lead me to a research about this sorcery. downloaded the image and went into research mode and discovered it’s a cheap HDR trick. now i wanted it too!

obviously there’s only one scalable and usable solution – create figma plugin to make anything glow. turns out quite easy. here’s step by step guide using the plugin:

1. select any layer, group or whatever
2. select your choice of export:
   1. jpeg: icc – apple rec.2020 format + pq icc profile spliced into the jpeg
   2. png: cicp – lossless png with a cicp chunk (9/16/0/1)
3. pick the strength of the glow:
   1. ref: 203 nits – reference white
   2. strong: 1000 nits – safe default
   3. bright: 4000 nits
   4. max: 10000 nits – the pq ceiling
4. pick scale

extremely easy as it turns out. the magic has already been figured out by scientists implementing the profiles in our common compressed image formats. i hope you find the plugin nice and easy to use. if anything, leave a comment on the plugin.