Overview

Starglow basically creates a star-shaped glow around the highlights of the source. The glow is made up of eight directions (up, down, left, right and the four diagonals). Each direction can be assigned an individual streak length and a color map. You can use up to three color maps at once.
The effect can be used on camera footage, 3D renderings or text. The effect you get depends very much on the source fed into Starglow. There is an adjustable highlight Threshold, so the effect can be adjusted to fit most kinds of footage. It also works very nicely with particle effects.
The starglow effect is similar to what you get when shooting with a diffusion lens. It can be used to add realism to 3D renderings or to enhance a magical, dreamy or romantic feeling in a clip shot with a camera. You can create many effects that are completely new, or you can use it to simulate various lens artifacts.

Quickstart
Import a footage file and apply Effect > Trapcode > Starglow. If you cannot see any change in the image, open the Pre-Process group and lower the Threshold value until you notice a change in the output. Now try and change the Preset pop-up to see the variety of different looks. It's as easy as that!