Image glitch guide

Start

The tool opens with a sample of bright, wavy colour, already pixel sorted along its rows.

What you need

• A current browser. The effects are worked out in JavaScript on a plain canvas, so no WebGL or GPU is needed.
• A picture, if you want your own. Any picture the browser can open works.

Your first result

1. Open Image glitch. The sample is already there.
2. Press Image A to open a picture, or drop one on the frame. Or keep the sample.
3. Pick an effect in the list, such as Channel shift or CRT warp.
4. Move that effect's sliders, or press Randomize to try new values.
5. Press Sweep to watch that slider breathe on its own; Record video keeps one sweep as a clip that loops. Press Save PNG to keep a still as glitch.png, or Copy to put it on the clipboard.

Good to know

• Only the panel of the effect you picked shows. Its settings stay when you switch away and back.
• Sliders glide to their new value and the picture redraws as they go.
• Data mosh, VHS tracking and JPEG corrupt use random numbers, so they look a little different on every redraw.
• The PNG is the size of the picture on the canvas, standard range (SDR). On a phone or touch screen, a picture bigger than 1024 pixels is shrunk to 1024 on its long side first.
• Your picture is kept on this device, and every lab tool that takes a picture opens with it, until you press × on its tile.
• On a phone the effects and the controls sit in bars on the screen. Tap a bar to open it.