Pixel Sorting

ピクセルソーティング / 2010– / Technique / Digital Image Techniques

Pixel Sorting selects image pixels by a brightness or hue threshold and reorders them within rows or columns, drawing long color streaks out of a still-recognisable source image. Kim Asendorf's released code enabled widespread reimplementation.

Pixel Sorting — Pixel sorting digital art composite — Slaytonjerry — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0
Pixel sorting digital art composite — Slaytonjerry — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · CC BY-SA 4.0
Pixel Sorting — AI-generated interpretation 1
AI-generated interpretation, not a reference work
Pixel Sorting — AI-generated interpretation 2
AI-generated interpretation, not a reference work

At a glance

Visual cues

  • Long horizontal or vertical pixel streams leaving a figure or landscape
  • Only part of an outline flowing into bands
  • Unselected areas preserving the source image
  • Local color bands smoothly ordered by value or hue

Best used for

  • Covers and posters that damage part of a photograph while keeping the subject legible
  • Transitions that turn a frame's color distribution into bands leading into the next shot

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Dictionary entry

Type
Keep copy outside the sorted field, or flow only part of a headline along the same axis while preserving body legibility.
Composition
Choose one sorting direction, tune the threshold to the subject and preserve islands of the source image.
Material
Select pixels by value, saturation or hue and reorder only contiguous intervals within a row or column.
Caution
Sorting the entire frame removes the tension with its source and leaves an ordinary striped pattern. Decide what breaks and what remains.
Further study
Kim Asendorf and Mountain Tour / Threshold and interval selection / Row, column and diagonal sorting

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https://indexstyle.org/styles/pixel-sorting
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[Pixel Sorting — IndexStyle](https://indexstyle.org/styles/pixel-sorting)
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