Image glitch guide

Every control

Every effect and every control, top to bottom. The panel shows only the section of the effect picked in the list; the others are listed here in order.

Load and save

They stay at the top while the panel scrolls. Your pictures stay on this device for every lab tool until you press × on a tile; Reset puts the controls back and leaves them.

Image AButton: Your picture. Press it to open one from your device, or drop one on the frame; two at once fill A and B. It is kept on this device, never uploaded, and every lab tool that takes a picture opens with it until you press × on its corner.
SwapButton: Changes which tile Image glitch uses, so a picture you added as B in another tool can be used here. When the other tile is empty, the sample comes back.
Image BButton: A second kept picture. Image glitch breaks one picture at a time: the tile it is not using is dimmed and says Not used here, and pressing it only says so.
Save PNGButton: Saves the picture as glitch.png. See PNG.
Record videoButton: Records one sweep, frame by frame, and saves it as image-glitch.mp4 (H.264, so it plays anywhere); a browser that cannot write MP4 gets a WebM. Sweep starts by itself if it was not running, and stops after. See MP4 and WebM.

Effects

The nine effects, in four groups: Sort, Shift, Corrupt and Analog. The picture redraws when you pick one. See glitch art.

Pixel sortButton: Sorts runs of pixels along rows or down columns. Where the page opens. See pixel sorting.
Block sortButton: Cuts the picture into squares and puts the bright squares in order of brightness. See block sort.
Channel shiftButton: Moves the red, green and blue layers apart. See channel shift.
Channel swapButton: Trades two colour channels, so colours turn strange. See channel swap.
JPEG corruptButton: Saves your picture as a JPEG, flips random bytes in the file, and shows what comes back. It always starts from your picture, not from another effect's result. See JPEG corruption.
Data moshButton: Slides random rows sideways. See row shift.
Scan linesButton: Darkens every few rows, like an old television. See scanlines.
VHS trackingButton: Jumps rows sideways, adds speckle and smears red, like worn tape. See VHS look.
CRT warpButton: Bows the picture outward, splits red from blue and darkens the corners, like a tube screen. See CRT warp.

Image

Here, a line shows the size of the picture, and the size it was shrunk from on a phone.

Sweep

Shows for every effect. Space presses Sweep, the lab's one keyboard. See loop.

SweepButton: Starts and stops the sweep: the picked effect's first slider breathes around the value you set, a smooth wave, and returns to it when you stop. Pick another effect while it runs and the sweep moves to that effect's first slider. Channel swap has no slider, so there it only says so. See sine wave and easing.
Seconds a cycleSlider · 1 to 12 · starts at 4: How long one breath takes, in seconds. Record video keeps exactly one, so the clip loops. See loop.
WidthSlider · 10 to 100 · starts at 60: How far the slider travels from end to end, as a share of its whole range, centred on your value. 100 swings the whole way.

Pixel sort

Shows when Pixel sort is picked.

ThresholdSlider · 0 to 255 · starts at 128: Only pixels that measure above this are sorted; the rest stay put and split the runs. Lower sorts more. See threshold and sort interval.
DirectionPick one · Horizontal · Vertical: Which way the streaks run. See sort direction.

Horizontal: Along each row. Where the page opens.

Vertical: Down each column.
Sort byPick one · Brightness · Hue · Saturation: What each pixel is measured and sorted by, darkest or lowest first. The threshold is measured the same way. See sort key.

Brightness: How light the pixel looks. Where the page opens. See luminance.

Hue: Where its colour sits on the colour wheel, from 0 to 360. The slider stops at 255, so violets and pinks past that are always sorted, and greys never are. See hue.

Saturation: How strong its colour is. See saturation.

Block sort

Shows when Block sort is picked.

Block sizeSlider · 4 to 64 · starts at 16: How many pixels wide and tall each square is. Squares cut short at the right and bottom edges keep their own pixels where a bigger square would not fit.
ThresholdSlider · 0 to 255 · starts at 128: Only squares brighter than this on average are moved; darker squares stay where they are.

Channel shift

Shows when Channel shift is picked. Each colour layer moves on its own and wraps round the edges.

Red offset XSlider · -100 to 100 · starts at 20: Moves the red layer left or right, in pixels.
Red offset YSlider · -100 to 100 · starts at 0: Moves the red layer up or down, in pixels.
Green offset XSlider · -100 to 100 · starts at 0: Moves the green layer left or right, in pixels.
Green offset YSlider · -100 to 100 · starts at 0: Moves the green layer up or down, in pixels.
Blue offset XSlider · -100 to 100 · starts at -15: Moves the blue layer left or right, in pixels.
Blue offset YSlider · -100 to 100 · starts at 10: Moves the blue layer up or down, in pixels.

Channel swap

Shows when Channel swap is picked.

Red and green · Red and blue · Green and bluePick one: Which two channels trade places. See RGB.

Red and green: Red and green. Where the page opens.

Red and blue: Red and blue.

Green and blue: Green and blue.

JPEG corrupt

Shows when JPEG corrupt is picked.

QualitySlider · 1 to 50 · starts at 5: How hard the JPEG is squeezed before it is broken. Low keeps less detail and shows bigger blocks. See JPEG quality and macroblock.
Glitch amountSlider · 0 to 200 · starts at 50: How many random bytes are changed. At 0 you see the plain JPEG. See byte.

Data mosh

Shows when Data mosh is picked.

IntensitySlider · 1 to 100 · starts at 30: What share of the rows is picked to slide, from 1 to 100 per cent.
Row shiftSlider · 1 to 100 · starts at 20: The farthest a row slides, in pixels, either way.

Scan lines

Shows when Scan lines is picked.

SpacingSlider · 2 to 20 · starts at 4: How many rows apart the dark lines are.
OpacitySlider · 0 to 100 · starts at 50: How dark the lines are, shown as 0 to 1.

VHS tracking

Shows when VHS tracking is picked.

OffsetSlider · 0 to 50 · starts at 15: The farthest a jumping row slides, in pixels. About three rows in ten jump. See tracking error.
NoiseSlider · 0 to 100 · starts at 30: How much speckle is added, and how strong it is. See analog noise.
Color bleedSlider · 0 to 100 · starts at 10: How far red smears in from the right, and how strongly. At 100 the red is taken wholly from that far along the row. See colour bleed.

CRT warp

Shows when CRT warp is picked.

DistortionSlider · 0 to 100 · starts at 30: How far the picture bows outward. The corners it pulls in from turn black, like the curved edge of a tube screen. See barrel distortion.
RGB splitSlider · 0 to 50 · starts at 5: How far red and blue are pulled apart, in pixels. See chromatic aberration.
VignetteSlider · 0 to 100 · starts at 40: How much the edges and corners are darkened. See vignette.

Randomize and save

RandomizeButton: Gives the sliders of the picked effect random values and redraws. The other effects, the pills and the picked effect stay. Channel swap has no sliders, so there it only says so. See randomize.
CopyButton: Copies the picture to the clipboard as a PNG. See clipboard.

Reset

ResetButton: Puts the effect, the pills and every slider back to how the page opened.