PIXEL SORTING APP

Yes, it is completely free. The Glitchology pixel sorting app has no watermark, no usage limits, no paywalled features and needs no account or email. Upload an image, sort it, and download the full-resolution result as a PNG, as many times as you like.

No. Being free does not mean trading your images for it: everything runs locally in your browser. Your image is decoded onto a canvas and sorted by a Web Worker on your own device, so it never leaves your computer. That also makes the app fast and safe to use with unreleased or private work.

Yes, this one. It is a free online pixel sorter that runs in any modern browser on desktop or mobile, so there is nothing to download, install or sign up for. If you prefer to code your own, the original ASDFPixelSort script for Processing is also free, and our list of free glitch tools covers more options.

Pixel sorting is a glitch art technique that rearranges the pixels in each row or column of an image according to a property such as brightness, hue or saturation. Because only the position of pixels changes, never their colour, you get smeared, dripping streaks that still follow the structure of the original picture. Our full guide to pixel sorting covers the history and the algorithm in depth.

Open this free pixel sorter, drop an image onto it (or click “Try a sample image”), then adjust the controls and watch the preview update. A good starting point is to sort by brightness, keep the interval mode on Threshold, and move the lower and upper threshold sliders until streaks appear where you want them. Switch between horizontal and vertical to change the direction of the drips, then press Download PNG.

In Threshold mode the app only sorts pixels whose brightness falls between the lower and upper values. Pixels outside that range act as barriers that break the image into separate streaks. A narrow range gives short, controlled streaks around mid-tones; a wide range sorts almost every pixel and produces long, dramatic melts. This is the same idea used in the original ASDFPixelSort script for Processing.

Brightness sorting orders pixels from dark to light and gives the classic pixel sort look. Hue sorting arranges pixels around the colour wheel, which creates rainbow gradients. Saturation sorting groups vivid and washed-out pixels together. Sorting by the red, green or blue channel produces tinted, more unusual results. Reverse the order to flip any of these.

If almost nothing changes, your threshold range is probably too narrow or sits where the image has no pixels, so widen it or switch Interval mode to Whole line. If the image is smeared into stripes, the range is too wide, so narrow it or lower the Max streak length slider to stop each streak from running across the whole picture. Edge detection mode is also useful for keeping subjects recognisable.

The app accepts JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF (first frame) and any other image format your browser can display. Images larger than 2400 pixels on the longest side are scaled down to keep sorting fast, and the result downloads as a lossless PNG.

Not in this app, which handles still images. For moving footage you can run a pixel sort script frame by frame in Processing, or apply similar effects in After Effects. See our list of free glitch tools for more options.

The app is free to use and adds no watermark and claims no rights over your output, so what you can do with the result depends on the image you started with. If you own the source image or have permission to adapt it, the sorted version is yours to use in prints, posters, album art and social posts.