Reorder a brightness span
Colors inside the brightness window are ranked and written back along the span. Pixels outside the window stay put. Each span is 16 samples.
Creative applications
- Streaked portraits, graphic landscapes, and hard horizontal or vertical color runs.
Starting workflow
- Start with Pixel Sort on a picture that has both dark and light regions.
- Narrow Dark limit and Light limit until only the band you want is streaking.
- Switch Direction when the streaks should run down the frame instead of across it.
Key controls
- Direction
Choose whether spans run across the picture or down it.
Default: Horizontal · Choices: Horizontal, Vertical
- Order
Place dark colors at the start of each span, or flip that order.
Default: Dark to light · Choices: Dark to light, Light to dark
- Sample size
Set how large each of the 16 samples is. Larger samples make longer streaks.
Default: 1.2% · Range: 0.4% to 4%
- Dark limit
Leave pixels darker than this limit unsorted.
Default: 0.05 · Range: 0 to 1
- Light limit
Leave pixels lighter than this limit unsorted. A limit below Dark limit sorts nothing.
Default: 0.95 · Range: 0 to 1
- Mix
Blend the sorted spans with the incoming picture. Zero is an exact bypass.
Default: 100% · Range: 0% to 100%
Practical tips
- Keep Sample size moderate if faces or type should stay recognizable between the streaks.
Limitations
- Each span ranks 16 samples. This is not a sort of the whole frame, and it does not use a storage-buffer compute pass.
