Particle Shift

Particle Shift builds every picture out of particles. The pictures waiting their turn are a faint grey stipple, like a drawing made of dots. The active picture is solid and in full colour.

How it works

When a picture becomes the active one, a small soft wave crosses it. Where the wave passes, the particles rise slightly off the surface, swell, take their colour and settle back fused into the solid picture. Leaving runs the wave back, and because each picture moves at a steady rate, a change can reverse halfway without a jump. In Shift mode the cursor turns the area it passes back into particles, with the same soft edge, so a visitor can brush the picture apart and watch it close again.

Settings

• Grains: how many particles make up a picture.
• Change time: seconds the wave takes to cross a picture.
• Wave: width of the wave, from a crisp front to a broad soft one.
• Slant: how diagonal the wave runs.
• Lift: how far the particles rise as the wave passes.
• Particle size and Grain: the size of the resting particles and of all of them.
• Faded: how bright the waiting pictures are.

Use it for

Art portfolios, tech launches and dreamy editorial sets. For particles as a scene of their own, see particles; for a line-drawn version of the same reveal, see Contour Lines.