Cinemagraph guide

Three looks

Each picture below was made from the lake sample with the water it opens with painted. The table under each one is the whole recipe; everything not listed stays as the page opens. The values are slider positions, so an Amplitude of 100 shows 0.100 beside the slider.

The motion never stops, so a still frame catches one moment. Yours will differ in the detail.

Rippled shore

Wave pushes pixels along crossing ripples. With Frequency high the ripples are small: the edge of the hills turns into a row of scallops, and the moon's reflection curls.

Lower Frequency for long, slow swells.

A swell on one side

Set to Vertical, Sway reads each painted pixel from a little higher or lower in the photo, most at the right edge and not at all at the left. Here the dark hills bend down into the lake in a wide swell on the right, while the left side stays calm.

Pick Horizontal and the rocking runs side to side instead, strongest at the bottom of the frame.

Broken water

Shimmer jitters pixels in small patches. At the finest Scale and a high Amplitude, the shore breaks into a row of lumps, the water turns choppy, and the moon's reflection smears sideways, like wind-chopped water.

Lower Amplitude for a soft heat-haze shimmer.