Distort effects and their settings
All 12 effects in the Distort tab, from Glitch and RGB Shift to Swirl, Fisheye and Pixel Sort, with what every slider does.
Intermediate5 min readUpdated 25 September 2026Effects · Distort
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The Distort tab moves pixels around: slicing, shifting, warping and smearing them. Use this page to get a glitch or lens look under control. These effects are sensitive, so small slider moves can change a lot; set the strength first, then the pattern.
Glitch
Cuts the photo into horizontal strips and slides about three in ten of them sideways, like a corrupted video frame. The rest stay in place.
| Setting | Range | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Offset | 10 to 100 | How far the shifted strips move. Low values give a subtle tear; high values throw strips far across the frame. |
| Slice Height | 5 to 100 | How tall each strip is. Thin strips look like signal noise; tall strips look like broken blocks. |
| Randomize | 0 to 1000 | Picks which strips move and by how much. Scrub it to find a good arrangement. |
Good for: music, tech and gaming artwork, thumbnails. There is also a Glitch quick tool.
RGB Shift
Moves the red channel one way and the blue channel the opposite way. Green stays put, so edges get red and blue fringes.
| Setting | Range | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Shift Amount | 5 to 100 | How far the channels are pulled apart. Low values give a slight 3D-glasses edge; high values double the image. |
| Direction | 0 to 360° | The direction of the split. 0° is horizontal, 90° vertical. |
Good for: a quick analogue or VHS feel, energy on portraits and type.
Chromatic
A stronger colour split. Red and blue move in opposite directions along the angle, and green moves at right angles to them by half the distance, so all three colours separate.
| Setting | Range | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Spread | 5 to 100 | How far the colours separate. It goes further than RGB Shift at the same value. |
| Angle | 0 to 360° | The direction of the red and blue split. |
Good for: lens-aberration and cheap-camera looks, trippy portraits. The split is the same across the whole frame, unlike a real lens where it grows towards the edges.
Wave
Ripples the photo with a regular sine wave.
| Setting | Range | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Frequency | 10 to 100 | The width of each wave. Despite the name, higher values give wider, gentler waves and lower values give tight ripples. |
| Amplitude | 10 to 100 | How far pixels are pushed. Higher values bend lines more. |
| Direction | 0 to 360° | The direction the waves run across the image. |
Good for: water reflections, heat haze, psychedelic posters.
Displace
An organic, irregular warp built from overlapping waves, so it looks less regular than Wave.
| Setting | Range | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Strength | 5 to 100 | How far pixels are pushed. |
| Frequency | 10 to 100 | The size of the warp. As with Wave, higher values give broader, smoother bends. |
| Pattern | 0 to 1000 | Shifts the warp to a new arrangement. |
Good for: liquid and dream effects, warped backgrounds behind type.
CRT
An old tube monitor: the image bulges outward, dark scanlines run across it, red, green and blue stripes appear in the columns, and the edges fade to black.
| Setting | Range | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Barrel Distortion | 0 to 100 | How much the screen bulges. 0 keeps it flat. |
| Scanline Gap | 10 to 100 | The spacing of the dark scanlines. Low values give dense lines; high values space them out. |
Good for: retro gaming, 80s and 90s nostalgia, screenshots made to look like old TVs.
Swirl
Twists the photo around its centre. The twist is strongest in the middle and fades to nothing at a circle as wide as the shorter side, so the corners stay untouched.
| Setting | Range | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Twist Amount | 0 to 100 | How far the centre is turned, up to about two full turns. 0 is no change. |
Good for: hypnotic and psychedelic art, drain and vortex looks. Centre the subject first, as the swirl is always around the middle.
Fisheye
Bends the photo as if through a wide lens.
| Setting | Range | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Distortion | 10 to 100 | At 50 nothing changes. Above 50 the centre bulges outward (the fisheye look). Below 50 the centre pinches inward. |
The default value (after Reset) is 50, so the photo looks unchanged until you move the slider. Strong bulges stretch and smear the corners.
Good for: skate and street photo looks, comic close-ups, funny pet portraits.
Motion Blur
Smears the photo in one direction, as if the camera or subject moved.
| Setting | Range | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Length | 5 to 100 | How long the streak is. |
| Direction | 0 to 360° | The direction of the streak. 0° is horizontal. |
Good for: a sense of speed on cars, runners and sport. Mask it in the Editor to keep the subject sharp and blur only the background.
Radial Blur
A zoom blur. Pixels are smeared along lines from a centre point, and the blur grows with distance from it, so the centre stays sharp.
| Setting | Range | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Strength | 10 to 100 | How much the outer areas are smeared. |
| Center X | 0 to 100% | Horizontal position of the sharp point, from left to right. |
| Center Y | 0 to 100% | Vertical position of the sharp point, from top to bottom. |
Good for: action and impact, pulling focus to a face or product. Set Center X and Y on the subject first.
Pixel Sort
In every row, runs of pixels brighter than the threshold are sorted from dark to light, left to right. Bright areas turn into horizontal streaks; dark areas stay as they are.
| Setting | Range | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Brightness Threshold | 0 to 100 | Only pixels brighter than this are sorted. Lower values sort more of the image and give longer streaks; higher values sort only highlights. |
| Randomize | 0 to 1000 | Shown on the panel. In the current version Pixel Sort gives the same result at any value. |
Good for: glitch art, skies and bright backgrounds that melt into streaks. Sorting is always horizontal.
Slice Shift
Cuts the whole photo into equal bands and shifts every band by a random amount. Unlike Glitch, every band moves.
| Setting | Range | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Shift Amount | 10 to 100 | How far the bands can move. |
| Slice Count | 5 to 100 | How many bands the photo is cut into. Low values give a few wide bands; high values give many thin ones. |
| Direction | 0 to 360° | Between about 46° and 134° the bands are vertical columns shifted up and down. At every other value they are horizontal rows shifted sideways. |
| Randomize | 0 to 1000 | Picks new shift amounts for each band. |
Good for: editorial and fashion layouts, broken-poster looks, type treatments.