How to Use Sparkles in PhotoDirector

PhotoDirector's Sparkles adds a twinkling effect to the bright points in your photos as soon as you open the tool. Use it on night shots with string lights or other small lights to make them shine like stars. You don't have to place every sparkle by hand, but you can still add or erase individual ones.

From the PhotoDirector launcher, choose Guided & GenAI.

Click Open at the top left of the canvas to bring in your photo. Then click Effects in the rail on the left and choose Sparkles under Light / Lens Effects.

As soon as the panel opens, PhotoDirector adds sparkles to the bright points in your photo, here the lights on the umbrella.

To change their look, click the first Sparkle box, under Change style of automatically added sparkles, and pick a style from the grid. It holds 44 styles, from soft glows and star bursts to snowflakes and hearts, and your pick changes every automatic sparkle at once. This example uses the star burst, fourth in the top row.

Under Settings, keep the Auto tab selected and drag the sliders. Intensity sets how bright the sparkles are, Amount sets how many appear, and Rotation, at the bottom of the panel, turns them. This example raises Intensity to 78 and leaves Amount at 50.

The Manual tab has the same settings for the sparkles you add yourself in Step 4.

Below Rotation, Sparkle Color sets where the colors come from. Use color from image, the default, takes them from your photo. Select Use random color to let PhotoDirector pick them instead.

Under Color Adjustment, drag Hue to shift the sparkle color. Drag Saturation to the left to fade the color toward white, or to the right to make it stronger.

To remove a sparkle in the wrong place, click Eraser under Select a sparkle tool, set its size with Eraser settings, and click the sparkle. In this example, the Eraser removed the sparkle on her forehead.

To add a sparkle, pick its style in the second Sparkle box, click Add, and then click the photo where you want it.

To turn the photo into a short animation, check Enable animation effect near the bottom of the panel. Choose Rotate and twinkle, the default, or Twinkle only. Then drag the slider between Slower and Faster to set the speed, and click play below the photo to preview it. For a still photo, skip to Step 6.

To add music, check Background music to open Add Background Music. Select a track in the Default list and click play to hear it. Fade in and Fade out, both checked by default, ease the music in at the start and out at the end.

A sparkle animation runs 30 seconds at most, so drag the handles at either end of the bar to trim a longer track. Then click OK. To change the track later, click the ... button next to its name in the panel.

To check the change, click the side-by-side view button, the second icon at the bottom left of the canvas. The original and edited photos appear next to each other, labeled Before and After. When it looks right, click Export at the top of the window to save the photo. For the file types you can save, see PhotoDirector's supported file formats.

If you animated the sparkles, Export opens a menu. Choose New Video/GIF File to save the animation, or New Photo File to save a still photo without it.

In Sparkle Effect Production, set the Output folder and File name. Then pick a video format or GIF under Select a file format. A GIF has no sound, so pick a video format to keep the background music. For a video, choose the Aspect ratio and Profile, set the Duration up to 30 seconds, and click Produce.

If you pick GIF, the window shows Image size instead of Aspect ratio, Profile, and Duration. It also notes that a GIF has no background music. Set the Width and Height in pixels, then click Produce.

We tested these steps in PhotoDirector 365 version 18.0.10 on Windows.