[!NOTE] This is one of 212 standalone projects, maintained as part of the @thi.ng/umbrella monorepo and anti-framework.

🚀 Please help me to work full-time on these projects by sponsoring me on GitHub. Thank you! ❤️

About

Typedarray integer & float pixel buffers w/ customizable formats, blitting, drawing, convolution.

[!IMPORTANT] In July 2024 this package was restructured and split-up to extract some features into smaller more focused packages:

@thi.ng/pixel-convolve

@thi.ng/pixel-dominant-colors

Buffer creation from HTML image elements or canvas w/ opt resize & format conversion (browser only)
12 packed integer and 6 floating point preset formats (see table below)
Palette-based indexed pixel formats
Buffer-to-buffer blitting w/ automatic format conversion
Buffer-to-canvas blitting (incl. offscreen canvas support)
Buffer-to-buffer blending w/ Porter-Duff operators
Pre/post-multiply alpha
Region / sub-image extraction
Single-channel manipulation / extraction / replacement / conversion
Accessors for normalized channel value
Image sampling & filtered resizing
- Filters: nearest neighbor, bilinear, bicubic
- Wrap behaviors: clamp, wrap, repeat
Invert image
XY coordinate-based pixel & channel-only accessors (w/ optional bounds checking)
Declarative custom pixel formats with optimized code generation
HTML canvas creation & ImageData utilities

Integer pixel formats

All integer formats use the canvas native ABGR 32bit format as common intermediate for conversions. During conversion to ABGR, channels with sizes smaller than 8 bits will be scaled appropriately to ensure an as full-range and as linear as possible mapping. E.g. a 4 bit channel will be scaled by 255 / 15 = 17.

Format specs can freely control channel layout within current limits:

Channel sizes: 1 - 32 bits.
Storage: 8, 16 or 32 bits per pixel

Custom formats can be defined via defIntFormat().

Format ID	Bits per pixel	Description
`ALPHA8`	8	8 bit channel (alpha only)
`GRAY8`	8	8 bit single channel (grayscale conv)
`GRAY_ALPHA8`	16	8 bit single channel (grayscale conv), 8 bit alpha
`GRAY16`	16	16 bit single channel (grayscale conv)
`GRAY_ALPHA16`	32	16 bit single channel (grayscale conv), 16 bit alpha
`ARGB4444`	16	4 channels @ 4 bits each
`ARGB1555`	16	5 bits each for RGB, 1 bit alpha
`RGB565`	16	5 bits red, 6 bits green, 5 bits blue
`RGB888`	32 (24 effective)	3 channels @ 8 bits each
`ARGB8888`	32	4 channels @ 8 bits each
`BGR888`	32 (24 effective)	3 channels @ 8 bits each
`ABGR8888`	32	4 channels @ 8 bits each

ALPHA8 is mapped from/to ABGR alpha channel
GRAY8/16, GRAY_ALPHA8/16 compute grayscale/luminance when converting from ABGR and in return produce grayscale ABGR
In all built-in formats supporting it, the alpha channel always occupies the most-significant bits (up to format size)

Indexed, palette-based pixel formats

Instead of storing colors directly for each pixel, palette-based formats are supported which only store a color index per pixel (e.g. as is done for GIF and/or indexed PNG formats). These formats can be created via the defIndexed() family of functions.

Floating point pixel formats

Strided floating point format presets for use with floatBuffer(). New formats can be defined via defFloatFormat().

Format ID	Channel count	Description
`FLOAT_GRAY`	1	Single channel / grayscale
`FLOAT_GRAY_ALPHA`	2	Grayscale and alpha channel
`FLOAT_GRAY_RANGE`	1	Grayscale (user defined value range)
`FLOAT_NORMAL`	3	Normal map (signed values)
`FLOAT_RGB`	3	Red, Green, Blue
`FLOAT_RGBA`	4	Red, Green, Blue, Alpha

All color channels are unclamped (but can be clamped via buf.clamp()). For conversion to packed int formats assumed to contain normalized data (i.e. [0..1] interval, with exception of FLOAT_NORMAL which uses [-1..1] range)
Conversion between float formats is currently unsupported

Filtered image sampling and resizing

Available (and optimized) for both integer & floating point formats, image samplers can be created with the following filters & wrap modes:

Filters

"nearest" - nearest neighbor
"linear" - bilinear interpolation
"cubic" - bicubic interpolation

Wrap mode

"clamp" - outside values return 0
"wrap" - infinite tiling
"repeat" - edge pixels are repeated

import { intBuffer, defSampler, ABGR8888 } from "@thi.ng/pixel";

const src = intBuffer(4, 4, ABGR8888);

// fill w/ random colors
src.forEach((_,i) => 0xff000000 | Math.random() * 0xffffff);

// create bilinear sampler w/ repeated edge pixels
const sampler = defSampler(src, "linear", "repeat");

// sample at fractional positions (even outside image)
sampler(-1.1, 0.5).toString(16)
// 'ff79643a'

// resize image to 1024x256 using bicubic sampling
const img = src.resize(1024, 256, "cubic");

Filter
`"nearest"`
`"linear"`
`"cubic"`

Status

STABLE - used in production

Search or submit any issues for this package

Support packages

@thi.ng/pixel-analysis - Image color & feature analysis utilities
@thi.ng/pixel-convolve - Extensible bitmap image convolution, kernel presets, normal map & image pyramid generation
@thi.ng/pixel-dither - Extensible image dithering w/ various algorithm presets
@thi.ng/pixel-dominant-colors - k-means based dominant color extraction from images/pixel buffers
@thi.ng/pixel-flow - Naive, lightweight CPU-based dense optical flow implementation
@thi.ng/pixel-io-geotiff - GeoTIFF reader support for @thi.ng/pixel
@thi.ng/pixel-io-netpbm - Multi-format NetPBM reader & writer support for @thi.ng/pixel
@thi.ng/pixel-io-pfm - Portable FloatMap image format support for @thi.ng/pixel
@thi.ng/pixel-io-tiff - Basic TIFF image format support for @thi.ng/pixel

@thi.ng/color - Array-based color types, CSS parsing, conversions, transformations, declarative theme generation, gradients, presets
@thi.ng/porter-duff - Porter-Duff operators for packed ints & float-array alpha compositing
@thi.ng/rasterize - Headless 2D shape drawing, filling & rasterization for arbitrary targets/purposes (no canvas required)
@thi.ng/shader-ast - DSL to define shader code in TypeScript and cross-compile to GLSL, JS and other targets
@thi.ng/webgl - WebGL & GLSL abstraction layer

Installation

yarn add @thi.ng/pixel

ESM import:

import * as pix from "@thi.ng/pixel";

Browser ESM import:

<script type="module" src="https://esm.run/@thi.ng/pixel"></script>

JSDelivr documentation

For Node.js REPL:

const pix = await import("@thi.ng/pixel");

Package sizes (brotli'd, pre-treeshake): ESM: 7.53 KB

Dependencies

Note: @thi.ng/api is in most cases a type-only import (not used at runtime)

Usage examples

27 projects in this repo's /examples directory are using this package:

Description	Live demo	Source
Interactive image processing (adaptive threshold)	Demo	Source
ASCII art raymarching with thi.ng/shader-ast & thi.ng/text-canvas	Demo	Source
Interactive & reactive image blurhash generator	Demo	Source
Color palette generation via dominant color extraction from uploaded images	Demo	Source
2.5D hidden line visualization of digital elevation files (DEM)	Demo	Source
Barnsley fern IFS fractal renderer	Demo	Source
Optical flow analysis of web cam or video inputs	Demo	Source
Pixel buffer manipulations	Demo	Source
Matrix-based image color adjustments	Demo	Source
Showcase of various dithering algorithms	Demo	Source
Randomized 4-point 2D color gradient image generator	Demo	Source
Image dithering and remapping using indexed palettes	Demo	Source
Normal map creation/conversion basics	Demo	Source
Interactive pixel sorting tool using thi.ng/color & thi.ng/pixel	Demo	Source
RGB waveform image analysis	Demo	Source
Image-based Poisson-disk sampling	Demo	Source
Port-Duff image compositing / alpha blending	Demo	Source
Steering behavior drawing with alpha-blended shapes	Demo	Source
Basic usage of the declarative rdom-forms generator	Demo	Source
Responsive image gallery with tag-based Jaccard similarity ranking	Demo	Source
2D scenegraph & image map based geometry manipulation	Demo	Source
WebGL & Canvas2D textured tunnel shader	Demo	Source
Fork-join worker-based raymarch renderer (JS/CPU only)	Demo	Source
Textmode image warping w/ 16bit color output	Demo	Source
Multi-layer vectorization & dithering of bitmap images	Demo	Source
Visual comparison of biased vs. unbiased normal vectors projected on the surface of a sphere	Demo	Source
Minimal multi-pass / GPGPU example	Demo	Source

API

Generated API docs

import * as pix from "@thi.ng/pixel";
import { SRC_OVER_I } from "@thi.ng/porter-duff";
import { pixelCanvas2d } from "@thi.ng/canvas";

import IMG from "../assets/haystack.jpg";
import LOGO from "../assets/logo-64.png";

const [img, logo] = await Promise.all([IMG, LOGO].map((x) => imageFromURL(x)));

// init 16bit int RGB pixel buffer from image (resized to 256x256)
const buf = intBufferFromImage(img, RGB565, 256, 256);

// create grayscale buffer for logo and use Porter-Duff operator to
// composite with main image. Since the logo has transparency, we
// need to premultiply alpha first...
intBufferFromImage(logo, GRAY_ALPHA8).premultiply().blend(SRC_OVER_I, buf, {
    dx: 10,
    dy: 10,
});

// extract sub-image
// (method returns undefined if result region is < 1 pixel)
const region = buf.getRegion(32, 96, 128, 64)!;
// copy region back at new position
region.blit(buf, { dx: 96, dy: 32 });

// or alternatively blit buf into itself
// buf.blit(buf, { dx: 96, dy: 32, sx: 32, sy: 96, w: 128, h: 64 });

// create html canvas
// (returns obj of canvas & 2d context)
const { canvas } = pixelCanvas2d(buf.width, buf.height * 3, document.body);

// write pixel buffer to canvas
buf.blitCanvas(canvas);

// manipulate single color channel
const id = 0;
const ch = buf.getChannel(id).invert();
for (let y = 0; y < ch.height; y += 2) {
    for (let x = (y >> 1) & 1; x < ch.width; x += 2) {
        ch.setAt(x, y, 0xff);
    }
}
// replace original channel
buf.setChannel(id, ch);
// write pixel buffer to new position
buf.blitCanvas(canvas, { y: buf.height });
// create & write grayscale version
buf.as(GRAY8).blitCanvas(canvas, { y: buf.height * 2 });

Authors

Karsten Schmidt (Main author)
Askar Yusupov

If this project contributes to an academic publication, please cite it as:

@misc{thing-pixel,
  title = "@thi.ng/pixel",
  author = "Karsten Schmidt and others",
  note = "https://thi.ng/pixel",
  year = 2019
}

License

Keywords

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Package last updated on 25 Dec 2025

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@thi.ng/pixel

.css-11gvwjj{object-fit:cover;display:inline;}