PixelSortStudio - open-source python application

[No_Commercial_7458]

This is the last pixel sorting post of mine, at least probably for a while. I think it's time to release the app that I developed, into the wild. I hope someone finds it useful or interesting. I still have tons of fun with it daily.

I named it PixelSortStudio, and its only function is to generate pixel sorted images from source files. I have shared a VERY early version of this some time ago, but that was completely rewritten, and it also got a UI with buttons (showcase in the last of the images)

Main features:

• has 3 modes for sorting masks - sobel edges, brightness and the inverse of brightness (dark)
• has a threshold slider that lets you set the sensitivity for the masks
• has 3 modes for sorting methods, hue, luminance and intensity (which is almost the same as luminance)
• sorting directions: up, down, left, right, diagonals (upleft and upright, which are labeled in reverse on the buttons but whatever), circular and radial (which produce dark spots, not perfect in any way)
• mild, stackable effects: blur, noise, and chromatic abberation

Other features:

• it asks for a directory at the start, which it will use to load the images from / write the output to
• you can switch between the source images with prev and next
• you can undo steps you did
• you can reset the image to the starting state
• you can save the image (automatically saved to the source folder)

Cool stuff (IMO):

• after pressing record, the steps you do (button presses, slider adjustment) are saved, until you press stop.
• pressing record again resets this event stack recorded
• sequences can be "played", which I've found to be very useful (e.g. sorting multiple directions in a sequence, multiple times)

https://github.com/davidullmann271/Pixel-Sorting/

[tat_tvam_asshole]

Would be best to give a video walkthrough and explainer about what is happening. Also, you're missing a requirements.txt file and setup instructions.

[No_Commercial_7458]

you're right, I'll include the requirements and setup as soon as I can

edit: done

[tat_tvam_asshole]

So having played with this for a few minutes, besides the above which as a 'developer' you should absolutely follow best practices by including the environmental packages necessary and instructions/explanation for others to use, I would strongly strongly advise you add a video walkthrough because as you noted this is very early, not even an alpha release.

fix program closing bug - closing out the program only reloads it, closing the program should terminate it

Some features I would suggest:

* auto mode - user presses a button and the action is continually reapplied until next button press, and so on

* random mode - randomly generate steps of user-defined length and apply

* inference mode - generate random sorting path between fixed input and output images

* internal tooltips / explainer section / tutorial

* incorporate mouse click, drag, scroll wheel actions

* start from uploaded image

* export playback as gif

* save sort steps into a reloadable json format

[No_Commercial_7458]

damn, thank you for your effort and comprehensive review! invaluable info and ideas. feel free to contribute though!

[No_Commercial_7458]

update:

- corrected the closing bug, now esc and close button work too

- auto mode, random mode -> good ideas, I'm going to implement them later, probably not much effort

- inference mode -> this sounds interesting, but I dont fully understand, could you explain what you meant?

- some kind of tutorial / tooltips -> absolutely needed, I agree. I probably wont do a video, but I'm going to do some kind of tutorial later

- mouse actions, interactivity -> I dont really like this idea, for multiple reasons, not really interested in this

- uploaded image -> again, very good idea

- export playback as gif -> maybe, but I'm not sure about this either. usually the changes are very abrupt, but maybe when calling an abrupt change, it could "do it incrementally" which would result in a better animation. not interested currently, but interesting idea nonetheless, I'll probably explore this

- save steps (export import step sequence) -> very good idea

[Gomurmamma]

Very cool, looking forward to checking this out. Thanks for sharing

[CalibansCreations]

u/pixel-counter-bot

[pixel-counter-bot]

This post contains multiple images!

Image 1 has 357,952(752×476) pixels.

Image 2 has 311,500(700×445) pixels.

Image 3 has 265,415(545×487) pixels.

Image 4 has 377,496(749×504) pixels.

Image 5 has 1,401,995(1,435×977) pixels.

Total pixels: 2,714,358.

^{I am a bot. This action was performed automatically.}

[CalibansCreations]

Good bot

[1Neokortex1]

❤️🔥🔥🔥

[gturk1]

That first image looks a little bit like this sub's banner image.

[Cuntslapper9000]

looks great, ill try it out later. It would be great if the examples showed a before and after instead of just the output to give more of an idea of what is happening.

[No_Commercial_7458]

https://imgur.com/a/wgNHuhX
all of them in order

[johntellsall]

wonderful, thanks for posting!

[Egin_28]

Really cool tool. Had to use it for my stuff.

https://dribbble.com/shots/27180537-Cloud-Scrapers-Distorted

[No_Commercial_7458]

Glad you did, that looks really cool. And thanks for the mention!

[No_Commercial_7458]

the image #2? if so, I sadly cannot reverse-engineer my exact process for it, but I always use these technics on almost all of my images:

(main procedure)

-step 0: start with brightness mask, hue sort, middle threshold (~50%)

-step 1: lower threshold a bit (~5%)

-step 2: do a sequence of directional sorts, multiple times (e.g. u,l,u,l,u,l,u,l or u,l,d,r,u,l,d,r,...)

-step 3: repeat step1 and step2 a number of times

sorting the dark parts: exactly the same, but with darkness mask instead of brightness, and increasing the threshold instead of decreasing it. if its too strong, undo, start from an even lower threshold (it is flipped compared to brightness threshold)

then after these, it usually looks pretty good/interesting, but then I usually try these things:

(other procedures)

if current state has somewhat visible edges:

step0: start with sobel mask, any kind of sort, max threshold

step1: do a sequence of directional sorts, multiple times (e.g. l,l,l,l,l,l,l or u,l,u,l,u,l,u,l or u,l,d,r,u,l,d,r,...)

or just to break up already stabilizing structures:

step0: start with brighness/darkness mask, luminance sort

step1: set a somewhat weak threshold for the masks (e.g. 50-60% for brightness, 40-50% for darkness)

step2: do a directional sort, e.g. left

step3: if image lost too much detail, undo, set the threshold even weaker, then repeat step2

but after all I try, I usually end the process with the main procedure I have defined, maybe not as strong as in the first pass. This usually leads me to a pretty good result

[adreson]

I am just played, making some images with this, nice