pixelification 1.2.2

Pixel Rearrangement Tool — Keyboard-Navigated Terminal UI

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No pixels created. No pixels destroyed. Only rearranged.

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◈ What Is This?

Pixelification is a terminal tool built on a single elegant constraint:

Every pixel in the output must come from the source. Nothing is invented.

It uses optimal transport via colour sorting to rearrange pixels — either between two images or across video frames — creating hypnotic, mathematically-grounded transformations. Think of it as a pixel teleporter: your source image's pixels physically migrate to approximate the structure of a target.

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◈ Modes

▸ Image Mode

Rearrange pixels from a source image to approximate the layout of a target image, then watch a 60-frame pixel-sliding animation.

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                                                                        │
│   SOURCE            TARGET            RECONSTRUCTION                  │
│   ┌──────┐          ┌──────┐          ┌──────┐                       │
│   │ 🌆   │          │ 🌊   │          │ ✦ ✦  │  ← pixels sliding    │
│   │      │ ──────▶  │      │ ──────▶  │  ✦   │    into place        │
│   │      │          │      │          │ ✦  ✦ │                       │
│   └──────┘          └──────┘          └──────┘                       │
│                                                                        │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

How it works — in three steps:

  1  ╔═══════════════════╗    2  ╔═══════════════════╗    3  ╔════════════════════╗
     ║   SORT BY COLOUR  ║       ║   MAP BY RANK     ║       ║   ANIMATE          ║
     ║                   ║       ║                   ║       ║                    ║
     ║  lum → hue → sat  ║  ──▶  ║  rank i (source)  ║  ──▶  ║  60-frame lerp     ║
     ║                   ║       ║  → position of    ║       ║  all pixels move   ║
     ║  darkest  = 0     ║       ║  rank i (target)  ║       ║  simultaneously    ║
     ║  lightest = N-1   ║       ║                   ║       ║                    ║
     ╚═══════════════════╝       ╚═══════════════════╝       ╚════════════════════╝

Step	What happens
Sort	Every pixel in both images is ranked by luminance, then hue, then saturation
Map	Source pixel with rank i teleports to where target pixel with rank i lives
Animate	Each pixel slides from origin to destination over 60 frames via linear interpolation

When multiple pixels land on the same display cell, their colours are averaged — a natural blending effect.

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▸ Video Mode

Rearrange every frame of a source video (or a still image looped as a video) to match the frames of a target video.

  Frame 0  ──[sort]──┬──[rank-map]──▶  Output Frame 0 ──┐
  Frame 1  ──[sort]──┼──[rank-map]──▶  Output Frame 1   ├──▶  video file
    ...              │                      ...          │
  Frame N  ──[sort]──┴──[rank-map]──▶  Output Frame N ──┘

Key differences from Image Mode:

Feature	Image Mode	Video Mode
Animation	60-frame pixel-slide	None — direct sort + write
Aspect ratio handling	N/A	Black bars to preserve content
Still image as source	✗	✓ looped for every target frame
Progress feedback	Visual window	Terminal progress bar

Status: Video: [████████████░░░░░░] 62.0% (124/200)

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◈ Installation

Using uv (Recommended)

Install Pixelification as a global tool:

uv tool install pixelification

Run it from anywhere:

pixelification

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Using pip

pip install pixelification

Then run:

pixelification

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Using pipx

No installation required:

pipx run pixelification

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◈ Hardware Support

Platform	Acceleration	Notes
NVIDIA GPU	✅ CUDA 13	Full GPU acceleration via cupy-cuda13x[ctk]
Intel CPU/GPU	⚡ CPU (NumPy)	Automatic fallback, no extra packages needed

On first launch, Pixelification writes a small runtime config to your OS config directory with the detected hardware-acceleration flag. It just works.

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◈ Usage

A keyboard-navigated terminal UI opens immediately:

  ■ Pixel Rearrangement Tool

  ● Rearrange Images    sort pixels between two images
  ○ Rearrange Videos    sort frames between two videos
  ○ Quit                exit the application

Keyboard Controls

Key	Action
↑ ↓	Navigate menu items
Enter	Select highlighted item
1–N	Jump directly to item N
q / Esc	Quit

Image Mode

1. Select your source image
2. Select your target image
3. Watch the rearrangement play out in an OpenCV window — three panels: Source · Target · Reconstruction
4. Press ESC or q to quit the animation
5. Click "Save Result Image" to export a PNG

Video Mode

1. Select a source video (or still image — it'll be looped)
2. Select a target video
3. Watch the terminal progress bar as frames are processed
4. Result plays in an OpenCV window — loops until ESC/q or window close
5. Click "Save Result Video" to export

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◈ Requirements

Python     ≥ 3.10
OpenCV     cv2
NumPy
prompt_toolkit

# Optional — installed automatically on supported platforms:
cupy-cuda13x[ctk]    # NVIDIA CUDA acceleration (Linux / Windows)
python3-tk           # Linux only — for file dialog fallback
                     # sudo apt install python3-tk

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◈ Rust Component

The codebase also includes Aster Browser — a Rust-based Win32 application.

⚠️ Windows only.

cargo build --release

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◈ The Algorithm (Deep Dive)

For the curious: this is discrete optimal transport solved via sorting. The classical OT problem asks "how do I move mass from distribution A to distribution B at minimum cost?" When cost = squared distance and both distributions have the same total mass, the solution on a 1D sorted line is simply to pair the ith element of one with the ith element of the other.

Pixelification extends this to colour space: pixels are projected onto a 1D ordering by (luminance, hue, saturation), making the sort a tractable proxy for true 2D optimal transport. The result is perceptually coherent pixel migration — similar tones find similar homes.

flowchart LR
    A[Source Image] --> C[lexsort\nlum → hue → sat]
    B[Target Image] --> D[lexsort\nlum → hue → sat]
    C --> E[s_order]
    D --> F[t_order]
    E --> G[forward mapping\nforward at s_order = t_order]
    F --> G
    G --> H[per-pixel position lerp]
    H --> I[scatter render\nnp.add.at]
    I --> J[60-frame animation]

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Every pixel has a story. This tool just reassigns the ending.