A premium hover effect that ripples and distorts an image like liquid, intensifying with cursor speed.

Hover an image and it distorts like the surface of water — the ripple ramps in, follows your cursor speed, and settles with a damped wave when you leave. Hover the images below.

Playground

Installation

pnpm dlx shadcn@latest add "https://godui.design/r/liquid-image.json"

LiquidImage distorts the image with an SVG feTurbulence + feDisplacementMap filter — supported in every modern browser. The displacement scale is eased toward its target in a single requestAnimationFrame loop and written straight to the filter, so the image itself never re-renders. Cursor velocity intensifies the ripple; leaving the image lets it settle back with a damped wave.

Usage

tsx

import { LiquidImage } from "@/components/godui/liquid-image";

tsx

<LiquidImage src="/photo.jpg" alt="Mountain" className="aspect-square" />

Always on

Set trigger="always" for a continuously breathing ripple, independent of hover.

tsx

<LiquidImage src="/photo.jpg" alt="Mountain" trigger="always" />

Tuning the ripple

strength is the peak displacement in pixels; frequency controls the ripple scale — smaller is larger and smoother.

tsx

<LiquidImage src="/photo.jpg" alt="Mountain" strength={40} frequency={0.008} />

Accessibility & fallback

When prefers-reduced-motion is set — or if SVG filter: url() is unavailable — LiquidImage falls back to a gentle CSS scale-and-brighten on hover, so the component degrades cleanly. Always pass a meaningful alt.

Props

Prop	Type	Default	Description
`src`	`string`	—	Image source.
`alt`	`string`	—	Accessible description of the image.
`strength`	`number`	`28`	Peak ripple displacement on interaction, in px.
`frequency`	`number`	`0.012`	Turbulence frequency — smaller gives larger, smoother ripples.
`trigger`	`"hover" \| "always"`	`"hover"`	When the ripple is active.
`imgClassName`	`string`	—	Classes for the inner `<img>` (sizing, aspect, object-fit).

LiquidImage also forwards every standard <div> attribute to the root element.

Liquid Image