Better Bloom (0.3 Beta)
(image filter plugin, LW6.5b and higher)

Better Bloom is meant to offer a fast and flexible bloom filter, good enough for animations.
If it faster than Lightwave's Bloom or Corona depends, because it scales differently. It is (at this point) independant to the image itself, only depending on resolution and radius, so it doesn't matter if only 1 pixel or the whole image gets the bloom applied (subject to change...). The biggest difference is that it scales linear ("O(n)", due to some hardware effects sometimes even better) with radius instead of quadratic ("O(n²)") like the mentioned LW counterparts. So the larger the radius the more dramatic the difference in rendertime.
The downside is only one algorithm works this way, a two-pass gaussian blur. For special shapes you still need to use Corona.

Planned features are:
- further speed improvements
- apply new settings without rerendering the scene / preview ability
  (Viper-support seems, despite the SDK statements, to be incomplete at this point in LW)
- support for envelopes and textures

At this point this is a free plugin (again, i don't think this won't change for this particular and mentioned future featureset)
Hope the documentation will be available soon.

downloads:

x86/Win32 Version: b_bloom_03beta_build15.zip (10kb)
(sorry no Mac version at this point)
 
Hope the documentation will be available soon.