The Decrypt Reveal

Overview

The Decrypt Reveal is a free, open workflow for creating an interactive image effect in which one photo becomes a scene that hides a second, corrupted truth. The reveal uses two images of the same scene, generated to be pixel-aligned and stacked on top of each other. A CSS mask-image radial gradient cuts a soft hole in the top image, and JavaScript moves that hole toward the cursor. Layer 2 is generated from layer 1 with an image-to-image prompt that opens with a layout law requiring pixel-identical composition. The workflow describes a pipeline in which each derived asset is generated from the locked previous stage, never from the original photo. Stages include a scene, a broadcast image, variants, a depth map, and shimmer frames. The effect is built as a stack of layers, with only opacity, transform, clip-path, and mask variables animating so it runs smoothly on a phone. Optional depth parallax uses a free depth estimator and a WebGL shader. The site also lists guardrails such as reduced-motion fallback, WebGL fallback, DPR cap, and pause off-screen.