ImageData

An ImageData represents raw image pixels as a two-dimensional array in RAM.

An ImageData can be created in several ways:

  • By creating a new ImageData with a given size and blank pixels, another ImageData, or with a given array of pixel data.
  • By creating a new ImageData by calling canvas.createPixelData.
  • By copying the pixels in the canvas via canvas.getImageData
  • By decoding an image encoded as a JPEG, PNG or WEBP image in an array of bytes via ImageData.decode.
  • By decoding an image encoded as a JPEG, PNG or WEBP image in a file via File.readImageData.

An ImageData allows reading and writing the underlying pixels. See ImageBitmap for a similar class that is more efficient for storing image content that is only going to be drawn.

See also the ImageData documentation on MDN.

ImageData

The ImageData constructor has four variants.

The first creates a blank ImageData:

width number The width of the ImageData.
height number The height of the ImageData.

The second creates an ImageData with the same size as another ImageData. Note that the source pixel data is not copied.

imageData ImageData The ImageData whose dimensions are copied. The pixels of the new ImageData object are all blank.

The third variant creates an ImageData with a copy of a subregion of another ImageData.

imageData ImageData The ImageData to copy pixels from.
x number The horizontal coordinate to start copying from.
y number The vertical coordinate to start copying from.
width number The number of pixels to copy per row.
height number The number of rows to copy.

The fourth variant takes an array of pixel data to copy:

pixels Uint8Array | Uint8ClampedArray | Uint16Array | Float32Array The pixel data to copy. Each pixel must have 4 entries in the array, representing the Red, Green, Blue and Alpha channels. The array size must be a multiple of 4 * width.
width number The width of the 2D pixel array.
height number? Optionally, the height of the 2D pixel array. Defaults to array.byteLength / (4 * width) if not set.

ImageData.decode()(Uint8Array | Uint8ClampedArray | ArrayBuffer) => Promise<ImageData>

Returns a new ImageData, decoded from the given image bytes.

The valid input formats are JPEG, PNG and WEBP.

imageData.dataUint8ClampedArray

The raw pixels stored in this ImageData.

Each pixel consist of 4 values, stored contiguously in the array:

R The value of the red channel for this pixel.
G The value of the blue channel for this pixel.
B The value of the green channel for this pixel.
A The value of the alpha channel for this pixel.

Each of these values is in the [0, 255] range. The alpha channel represents the transparency of the pixel: 0 is fully transparent, and 255 is fully opaque.

Pixels are stored in left-to-right, top-to-bottom order.

imageData.heightnumber

The height of this ImageData.

imageData.widthnumber

The width of this ImageData.

imageData.encode()(string?, number?) => Promise<ArrayBuffer>

Encodes this ImageData in a given image format and returns the bytes representing that encoding.

codec string? The image codec to use for the encoding. Valid values are "jpeg", "png" and "webp".  
quality number? For the "jpeg" codec, the quality parameter is a number from 0 to 100 indicating the quality of the output image. 0 is smaller but lower quality, 100 is the highest quality but also a larger encoding.