Particle universe guide

Start

The tool opens with the sample picture drawn in points, face on. The line under the picture's preview reads 600x600 | 50,176 particles.

A browser with WebGL 2. Current Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari have it.
A picture, if you want your own. Bright pictures on a light or colourful ground work best: dark parts of the picture make dark points that vanish into the dark frame.

Open Particle universe. The sample is already there.
Press Image A to open a picture, or drop one on the frame. Or keep the sample.
Under Formation, press Sphere, DNA helix or Cube, and watch the points fly there.
Drag across the frame to turn the cloud. Scroll, or pinch with two fingers, to move closer or further.
Open Actions and press Save PNG to keep the frame as particles.png.

Trail starts at 0.05, so moving points leave short, fading streaks. Raise it for longer streaks, or set it to 0 for a clean frame every time.
With a mouse, just moving across the frame pushes the points near the pointer. With a finger, the points are pushed where you touch, and turning and pushing happen together.
The Image formation turns the cloud face on again and holds it there until you drag.
If the 3D shapes look dark, press Rainbow or Position under Color mode. Much of the sample is its dark ground, and those points take its colour.
Your picture is kept on this device, and every lab tool that takes a picture opens with it, until you press × on its tile.
On a phone the controls sit in a bar at the bottom of the screen. Tap the bar to open them.