Image glitch guide

Overview

Image glitch breaks a picture on purpose and keeps what the break looks like.

Bright waves of red, green, blue and violet smeared into tall vertical pillars with rounded dark caps
Pixel sort down the columns of the sample, by brightness, at a threshold of 60.

This is glitch art. The main effect is pixel sorting: in each row or column, every run of pixels above a threshold is put in order, so bright areas smear into streaks.

The other eight effects sort whole blocks, move or swap the colour channels, break the bytes inside a JPEG, slide rows sideways, and copy the faults of VHS tape and old tube screens.

One effect shows at a time. You can save a PNG, record one sweep as a video, or copy the result.

Open Image glitch Start here

In this guide

  1. StartWhat you need, your first glitch, and saving it.
  2. Every controlEvery effect and control, one line each.
  3. Three looksThree pictures and the settings that made them.
  4. HelpWhat to do when something goes wrong.

It runs in your browser on a 2D canvas. It needs no GPU and nothing is uploaded. A mouse, a trackpad and a finger all work.