Monsters is a pretty high-end set of plug-ins. Atmospheric effects like Raindrops for example are meant to seamlessly integrate with live-action footage and give the impression that you rented a $10,000 rain machine on your low-budget shoot. Everything here looks pretty convincing, and unlike many other plug-in sets, there are very few “throw away” effects. GenArts clearly spent a lot of time making these look great.
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The latest version of Sapphire offers a very extensive set of over 240 plug-ins for every editing platform imaginable, including After Effects & Premiere Pro (which is the version I looked at for this review), as well as Final Cut 7, Autodesk, Avid, Nuke/OFX & Sony Vegas. Highly touted in this new release are many updates to the previous version including 6 new effects and 9 new transitions, updated LensFlare control as well as 3D lens flares (currently only available in actual 3D for After Effects), a preset browser and more.