Ridgelines

Ridgelines draws every picture as a stack of horizontal hairlines, each lifted by the brightness along its own row. The rows sit one behind another, so every ridge hides the lines behind it: the look known as a joy plot.

How it works

Each row is a line with a fill below it, and the fill is what hides the rows further back. A waiting picture is flat grey lines over a dark fill. When it becomes the active one, a soft wave crosses it: behind the wave the ridges rise into the picture's own relief and the fills take the picture's colour, so the whole picture is drawn in ridges. In Raise mode the cursor lifts the ridges near it.

Settings

• Rows: how many ridgelines run down a picture. Many fine rows give tall, dense ridges; few rows give broad, soft hills.
• Relief: how high the brightest point lifts its ridge.
• Line width and Line color: the ridgelines themselves.
• Fill opacity and Fill color: the fill of a waiting picture, which decides how much of the lines behind shows.
• Raise: how far the cursor lifts the ridges.
• Change time, Wave and Slant: the speed, softness and angle of the change wave.

Use it for

Album artwork and music pages, data stories, editorial covers and tech portfolios. For the same lift drawn as a mesh, see Wire Relief; for lines that flow around the picture, see Flow Lines.