Pixel Sorting Effect for Glitch Art
Pick a brightness range and watch those pixels melt into long streaks — the glitch-art technique made famous by Kim Asendorf, in one click.
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Pixel Sorting — how it works
Glitch-art pixel sorting: melt bright or dark pixels into long streaks.
What pixel sorting does
Along every column (or row) the effect finds runs of pixels whose brightness falls between the low and high thresholds and sorts each run from light to dark. Pixels outside the range stay put, so the subject keeps its shape while the selected tones smear into streaks.
Controlling the chaos
The thresholds decide what gets sorted: a narrow range touches only highlights or shadows, a wide one melts most of the image. Max length breaks long runs into shorter pieces for a more textured result. Stretch mode repeats the first pixel of each run instead of sorting — a smoother, paint-drip look.
Photos that sort well
Images with strong gradients — skies, skin, neon, sunsets — give the most dramatic streaks. Busy, evenly lit images tend to look noisy; raise the low threshold so only the brightest parts move.
Frequently Asked Questions
The brightness range probably doesn’t match your photo. Widen the gap between Threshold low and high, or switch Order to dark for a mostly dark image.
No — pixel sorting reorders real pixels along lines, while the Glitch Effect shifts slices and splits color channels. They combine nicely in Image Flow.
No, the sorting runs in your browser.