Light & Image Effects
Shattered Glass Refraction
Style guide
Connected angular glass shards displace portions of the original image along clear cracks and narrow highlights.
The visual language
What is Shattered Glass Refraction?
Shattered refraction shifts a portion of the image inside each connected clear shard. Cracks and fine edge reflections need to follow actual facets so the effect reads as viewing through broken glass. Enough continuity remains in key regions to preserve the original image.
Shattered glass offsets background fragments through connected transparent facets.
A portrait displaced across cracks while remaining partly aligned can locate the disruption in the glass rather than arbitrary image cutting.
How the style changes different subjects
- Portrait
- Parts of the face shift or overlap, contrasting intact features with refracted fragments.
- Landscape
- Building lines, lights and skylines split into displaced pieces, as if viewed through differently angled glass.
- Objects
- Highlights and edges repeat across fragments, making glossy glass or metal especially prominent.
- Subjects
- Choose portraits with simple backgrounds, night lights or isolated glossy objects, leaving enough intact area for recognition.
Bring the style to your photos
Reusable style prompt for Shattered Glass Refraction
Show the original image through a cracked clear glass sheet divided into irregular angular shards. Keep the pieces largely connected across the frame, but let each shard refract a slightly shifted or rotated portion of the source. Use thin sharp crack lines, subtle bevel highlights and small changes in reflection to reveal believable glass thickness. Retain enough aligned regions to keep the source composition recognizable. Avoid replacing the scene with abstract crystals, adding flying debris, turning surfaces into stone or applying a flat drawn crack texture over an unchanged image.Use the same style prompt for portraits, landscapes and objects.
Create with this styleKeep exploring
