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The Node Editor is the heart of the Fusion page, because it’s where you build the tree of nodes that makes up each composition. Each node you add to the node tree adds a specific operation that creates one effect, whether it’s blurring the image, adjusting color, painting strokes, drawing and adding a mask, extracting a key, creating text, or compositing two images into one.
You can think of each node as a layer in an effects stack, except that you have the freedom to route image data in any direction to branch and merge different segments of your composite in completely nonlinear ways. This makes it easy to build complex effects, but it also makes it easy to see what’s happening, since the node tree doubles as a flowchart that clearly shows you everything that’s happening, once you learn to read it.
The Node Editor displaying a node tree creating a composition
Inspector
The Inspector is a panel on the right side of the Fusion page that you use to display and manipulate the parameters of one or more selected nodes. When a node is selected in the Node Editor, its parameters and settings appear in the Inspector, ready for you to modify. The Fusion Inspector is divided into two panels. The Tools panel shows you the parameters of selected nodes.
The Modifiers panel shows you different things for different nodes. For all nodes, it shows you the controls for Modifiers, or adjustable expressions, that you’ve added to specific parameters to automatically animate them in different ways.
