Flexibility
As you can see, there are many, many different ways to put your QC files to work—but that’s only half the story. The range of what you can put in a Quartz composition is also formidable.
QC has an impressive range of filters that come from the core image library. You can have a lot of fun just putting photos, videos, or Photoshop files through a couple of filters. QC can also combine images using 31 different blending modes, some of which Photoshop users will recognize—Add, Alpha, Multiply, and so on—and some they won’t—Luminescence Premultiply, anyone?
As well as being a great compositor of images and movies, QC loves live data streams, including audio being picked up by a microphone, RSS feeds from the Internet, MIDI and OSC data from other programs, JavaScript patches within a composition, and data from the ambient light and motion sensors from a MacBook Pro. All of these data streams can be manipulated and represented in incredible visualizations.
Three-dimensional environments can be created; 3D objects loaded, lit, textured, and animated; and camera moves animated on timelines. Lots of smooth and simple controller patches are also built into QC, which allow complex and organic movements to be created simply and quickly.
The possibilities are endless.