Print reveal

Images in Strata do not fade in. They build up from the bottom, with a thin bright line riding the edge of the fill like a print head — the way a 3D printer lays material down. It is the theme’s signature, and it is one setting.

Turning it on and off

Theme settings → Animations

Setting	Notes
Enable scroll & hover animations	The master switch for all motion in the theme. Off means no print reveal either.
Default duration	100–800 ms. The base speed for animations across the theme.
Image reveal	Print — layer by layer (the default) or None. How content images appear as they scroll into view.

There is no per-section switch, on purpose: the effect sells through consistency, and a home page where some images build and others do not reads as a bug. Interface images — a testimonial’s author photograph, a card’s hover image — are excluded in the theme’s code, not by a setting.

What it applies to

Content images: hero and slideshow photographs further down the page, collection and product card images, image-with-text, collage, gallery, promo tiles, material photographs.

The first image on a page is never animated. Anything already on screen when the page loads is shown immediately. That is why turning the effect on costs nothing in page speed: the image Google measures — the largest one, at the top — is never hidden, never delayed and never animated.

When it does not run

The reveal stays off, with the image shown normally:

for visitors whose device asks for reduced motion (Settings → Accessibility → Reduce motion on macOS and iOS, Show animations in Windows off on Windows);
when Enable scroll & hover animations is off;
inside the theme editor, so you can work without images rebuilding on every change;
if JavaScript does not run at all — nothing is ever hidden without it.

Taking screenshots

An image that has not yet entered the viewport is mid-build, so a screenshot can catch a half-drawn photograph. Scroll the whole page once and back to the top before capturing, or turn Enable scroll & hover animations off for the capture and back on afterwards.