Apply blur to an affect in an adjustment layer, but not other layers?

[RaccoonAndRaptor]

I imagine this is possible but im still learning the program so a little confused. I want to apply a blur to a light ray, but I want the blur to only affect the light ray, and not the layers below the adjustment layer. I would imagine this could be done through pre composing? But the difficult im having is that since the light ray needs to affect all the layers below it, how could i apply a blur to *just* the light ray without the blur also being applied to the layers below it. A little confused as to what ordering trick im missing but it seems so simple im sure their has to be a way to do it in AE. Thanks! 

[Jose Panadero]

Why don't you apply the blur effect directly to the light ray?

[RaccoonAndRaptor]

Thats what i was trying to do :D, how do you do that?

[Jose Panadero]

Maybe I'm missing something. If you have one layer with the light ray, select that layer and apply the effect.

[RaccoonAndRaptor]

Nah i don't think you're missing anything I think i may not have explained it well. I have a light ray on an adjustment layer because I needed the light ray to go over several layers beneith it instead of clipping through some layers (if i applied it to a layer instead of an adjustment layer). But I need *just* the light ray to be affected by a gaussian blur, but since its on an ADJ layer, if i apply a gaussian blur to the adjustment layer, the layers (that i don't want to be blurred) are affected along with the light ray. So I'm wondering how do have a light ray affect all layers but a gaussian blur to just affect the light ray. If i put a gaussian blur on the adjustment layer, it is included in the whole affects all layers thing. Does that make sense? im not the best at aritculating myself sometimes!

[Jose Panadero]

Could you share a screen capture of your compositiona and timeline panels? Maybe you can apply the light ray effect to a black solid, use the sreen transfer mode on this layer to remove the black pixels and then apply the blur effect on the layer.

[Rick Gerard · Accepted solution]

Your workflow does not make sense. CC Light Rays need an alpha channel (transparency) on a layer to work properly. You would apply CC Light Rays to a layer, not an Adjustment layer. If you want to add additional effects to just light Rays you need a copy of the layer with the transparency, apply CC Light Rays to that layer, set the Transfer Mode option for the top layer to None, and then add your additional effects below CC Light Rays. Let's call the layer with transparency your Hero layer. It could be any layer with transparency. If your hero layer is a text layer you'll need to add Grow Bounds to the text layer or pre-compose it to fix edge problems.

If it were my project I would:

• Select the hero layer in the timeline and go to the Edit menu and select Copy with Relative Property links
• Paste the new layer into the timeline so that it is above the original hero layer
• Pre-compose if the layer is a text layer
• Apply CC Light Rays to the top copy of the layer and set the Transfer mode to None
• Change the blend mode of the top layer to Add or Screen
• Add something like Radial Fast Blur and Glow to the effects stack and start tweaking the settings
• If you use another effect like Radial Fast Blur that has a position property open the Parent Links panel (Shift + F4), and link the position properties of the effects to the Position property of CC Light Rays 
• Because you copied the layer with relative property links any transform property animation you make on the original hero layer will be reflected in the copy, even if you pre-compose the layer

The comp will look something like this. It will take about 2 minutes to create what I did.

[RaccoonAndRaptor]

Thank you for this detailed response, i'm going to read this about 400 times and try it, and i will get back to you! Although, I should just say thank you because clearly you have done it here. And thanks for confirming there was absolutely no way i was going to figure it out by myself! Lol. I really, really, really really appreciate you. Ima twerk with this for a bit until i get it understand!