Displacement Map
Displacement map effect for images and video: push pixels around by a drifting noise field or by the picture's own brightness, from heat haze to liquid warps.
What is a displacement map?
A displacement map is a grayscale picture that tells another picture where to move. Each pixel of the result looks up the map at the same spot and shifts by an amount set by how bright the map is there, so smooth gradients in the map make smooth warps, and hard edges make tears.
Here the map can come from two places. Noise uses a smooth, drifting noise field, which reads as heat haze or water. Brightness uses the picture itself, so light areas push one way and dark areas the other, and the picture warps along its own shapes.
The settings
Amount is the largest push, in pixels of a 1080p frame, from 0 to 200, and it opens at 24. Scale sets the size of the noise's swirls, also in 1080p pixels. Angle is the direction brightness pushes, in degrees. Speed sets how fast the noise drifts, and Seed picks a different field.
Haze is the default, a gentle shimmer. Liquid pushes 70 pixels with large, slow swirls. Crinkle uses small swirls and a small push, like crumpled foil. Luma mesh and Emboss push both use the picture's brightness, the second at a small Amount and Angle 135, which makes the picture look pressed into a surface.
How is this different from the other warps?
Ripple Effect and Swirl Effect follow a fixed shape, rings or a twist around the center. Liquify Image moves one spot that you place. A displacement map moves every pixel at once by a pattern, so it suits textures, shimmer and transitions better than one deliberate distortion.
In the studio, a third option, Layer below, takes the map from another layer, so text or a logo can push the picture underneath. That needs layers and isn't on this page.
Can you animate a displacement?
Yes. With Noise, Speed sets the drift, and 0 freezes it. A heat haze over a road wants Speed around 0.4 and a small Amount. A transition wants Amount high and then dropped to 0 over a second, using the keyframes in the studio's timeline.