Contents
What is pixel sort?
Pixel sorting is the process of isolating a horizontal or vertical line of pixels in an image and sorting their positions based on any number of criteria. For instance pixels positions may be sorted by each pixel’s luminosity, hue or saturation. One popular programming language for pixel sorting is Processing.
Who created pixel sorting?
Ken Asendorf
Doing this will yield some interesting artistic effects, but this is only one method of pixel sorting. It was inspired by Ken Asendorf, the inventor of the technique.
What causes Datamoshing?
In live camera software apps, datamoshing emerges from artefacts inherent in the algorithms of digital video. Like hex editing, these live camera apps result in the colour-saturation, pixel eruption and smearing of the image associated with datamoshing.
How are the pixels in an image sorted?
There are two steps involved: The rows/columns of the image are split into ‘intervals’ (more on this later). The pixels in each interval are rearranged so as to sort them with respect to some property, say, lightness. Kim Asendorf’s code simply applies this technique twice: first vertically, then horizontally.
Where did the idea of pixel sorting come from?
The earliest reference to pixel sorting I could find on the internet is this paper(PDF) by scientists from Iraq’s Scientific Research Council. They propose using it as a technique for unsupervised classification, to be applied to images from remote sensing satellites. Neat!
How does Kim Asendorf’s pixel sorting algorithm work?
The pixels in each interval are rearranged so as to sort them with respect to some property, say, lightness. Kim Asendorf’s code simply applies this technique twice: first vertically, then horizontally. The intervals are defined by regions of the image that are too light or too dark – the edges of these regions define the edges of the intervals.