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Pixfinder is an experimental JavaScript library for object detection.

Table of Contents

• Demos
• How it works
• API
  • findAll
  • find
  • util.dom
  • Point
• Development
• Changelog

Demos

See live demos here:

• Airplanes counter;
• Dry coast area calculation.

How it works

Pixfinder analyzes image (in a quite naive way) and extracts coordinates of each object. It detects objects by several criterias, the most important criteria is color.

For example we have an aerial shot of planes and we want to know how many planes at the airport right now:

To solve this problem we need to write several lines of code and Pixfinder will find all planes on the image. So let's find all planes and draw them all on the canvas:

var img = document.getElementById('img');

pix.util.dom.onload(img, function() {
    var planes = pix.findAll({
        img: img,
        distance: 5,
        colors: ['eff1f0'],
        clearNoise: 50
    });
    document.getElementById('count').innerHTML = planes.length;
    planes.forEach(draw);
});

function draw(plane) {
    var ctx = document.getElementById("canv").getContext("2d");
    ctx.beginPath();
    plane.forEach(function(point) {
        ctx.arc(point.x, point.y, 1, 0, 2 * Math.PI);
    });
    ctx.stroke();
    ctx.closePath();
}

Result:

API

findAll

Search all objects on the image.

Function	Return	Description
pix.findAll(<Object> options)	Array	Detects objects by the given options.

options

Option	Type	Default	Description
img	HTMLImageElement | HTMLCanvasElement		Loaded image or canvas element that has to be analyzed.
colors	Array		Colors of objects to find.
tolerance	Number	50	Color variation (number of shades). Helps to detect objects not only by strict colors (colors option), but by their shades too.
accuracy	Number	2	If accuracy = 1 then Pixfinder analyzes each pixel of the image, if accuracy = 2 then each 2nd pixel, and so on. Large number for better performance and worse quality and vice versa. The number should be a positive integer.
distance	Number	10	Distance between objects (in pixels). During the image analysis Pixfinder detects all pixels according to specified colors and then splits them into several objects by distance. If distance between two pixels is shorter than this option then pixels belong to the same object.
clearNoise	Boolean | Number	false	Removes all small objects after the image analysis. If false then noise clearing is disabled. If number is set then all objects that contain less than specified number of pixels will be removed.
concavity	Number	10	Determines the concavity of object edges. Internally Pixfinder uses hull.js library to build object boundary. Please see hull.js documentation for more information about this parameter.

find

Starts searching from the start point and returns one object that belongs to this point. This method should be useful for example if you want to highlight object under the mouse cursor.

Function	Return	Description
pix.find(<Object> options)	Array	Returns points of the object which belongs to the startPoint.

options

Option	Type	Default	Description
img	HTMLImageElement | HTMLCanvasElement		Loaded image or canvas element that has to be analyzed.
colors	Array		Colors of objects to find.
startPoint	Point		Point from which to start the object pixels search.
tolerance	Number	50	Color variation (number of shades). Helps to detect objects not only by strict colors (colors option), but by their shades too.
distance	Number	10	Distance between objects (in pixels). If distance between two pixels is shorter than this option then Pixfinder decides that pixels belong to the same object.
concavity	Number	10	Determines the concavity of object edges. Internally Pixfinder uses hull.js library to build object boundary. Please see hull.js documentation for more information about this parameter.

util.dom

Various DOM utility functions.

Method	Returns	Description
onload(<HTMLImageElement> img, <Function> func)		Calls func function when img image is loaded.
loaded(<HTMLImageElement> img)	Boolean	Checks whether img image has been loaded.

Point

Contains information about point.

Property	Type	Description
x	Number	The x coordinate.
y	Number	The y coordinate.

To-do

• write more demos;
• improve performance;
• make concavity param optional;
• think about configurable color comparison function;
• check and ensure that behaviour with distance 1px is correct;
• write tests.

Development

npm install     # install dependencies
gulp build      # check the code with JSHint, run tests and build dist
gulp            # build and watch for the src changes

Changelog

0.2.5 — 01.07.2018

• Update dependencies;
• Introduce concavity parameter.

0.2.4 — 30.03.2015

• Minor package.json and copyright fixes.

0.2.3 — 04.02.2015

• Minor package.json fixes.

0.2.2 — 04.02.2015

• Minor package.json fixes.

0.2.1 — 27.10.2014

• Readme fixes.

0.2.0 — 27.10.2014

• API changes without backward compatibility.

0.1.0 — 16.05.2014

• First Pixfinder release (unstable alpha version).