Prism Split

Prism Split shows every picture as its red, green and blue channels on three planes of light. Where the three planes line up they add up to the true picture; where they drift apart they leave soft colour fringes, like light through a prism.

How it works

A waiting picture's planes stand apart in depth and a little sideways, dim and nearly grey, so it reads as a faint picture with coloured edges. When it becomes the active one, a soft wave crosses it and the planes slide together behind it, bending along the front of the wave; the fringes thin out and the colour comes in full. In Split mode the cursor pulls the planes apart again where it passes, so the picture breaks into its colours under the pointer.

Settings

• Split: the depth between the colour planes of a waiting picture.
• Dispersion: how far the planes also shift sideways, which sets how wide the fringes are.
• Saturation: how much colour a waiting picture keeps.
• Change time, Wave and Slant: the speed, softness and angle of the change wave.
• Layout, Dim and Depth: where the pictures sit and how the waiting ones fade.

Use it for

Tech launches, music and club artwork, optics-inspired showcases. A single picture in the same style is the Prism image; for the same split as a screen effect on the whole scene, see Chromatic Aberration.