Get a pixel from HTML Canvas?

Question

Is it possible to query a HTML Canvas object to get the color at a specific location?

Answer 1

If you want to extract a particular color of pixel by passing the coordinates of pixel into the function, this will come in handy:

var canvas = document.getElementById("canvas");
var ctx = canvas.getContext("2d");
function detectColor(x, y){
  data=ctx.getImageData(x, y, 1, 1).data;
  col={
    r:data[0],
    g:data[1],
    b:data[2]
  };
  return col;
}

x, y is the coordinate you want to filter out color.

var color = detectColor(x, y)

The color is the object, you will get the RGB value by color.r, color.g, color.b.

Answer 2

Try the getImageData method:

var data = context.getImageData(x, y, 1, 1).data;
var rgb = [ data[0], data[1], data[2] ];

Answer 3

Yes sure, provided you have its context. (See how to get canvas context here.)

var imgData = context.getImageData(0,0,canvas.width,canvas.height);
// { data: [r,g,b,a,r,g,b,a,r,g,..], ... }

function getPixel(imgData, index) {
  var i = index*4, d = imgData.data;
  return [d[i],d[i+1],d[i+2],d[i+3]] // Returns array [R,G,B,A]
}

// AND/OR

function getPixelXY(imgData, x, y) {
  return getPixel(imgData, y*imgData.width+x);
}

---

PS: If you plan to mutate the data and draw them back on the canvas, you can use subarray

var
  idt = imgData, // See previous code snippet
  a = getPixel(idt, 188411), // Array(4) [0, 251, 0, 255]
  b = idt.data.subarray(188411*4, 188411*4 + 4) // Uint8ClampedArray(4) [0, 251, 0, 255]

a[0] = 255 // Does nothing
getPixel(idt, 188411), // Array(4) [0, 251, 0, 255]

b[0] = 255 // Mutates the original imgData.data
getPixel(idt, 188411), // Array(4) [255, 251, 0, 255]

// Or use it in the function
function getPixel(imgData, index) {
  var i = index*4, d = imgData.data;
  return imgData.data.subarray(index, index+4) // Returns subarray [R,G,B,A]
}

You can experiment with this on http://qry.me/xyscope/, the code for this is in the source, just copy/paste it in the console.

Answer 4

Note that getImageData returns a snapshot. Implications are:

• Changes will not take effect until subsequent putImageData
• getImageData and putImageData calls are relatively slow

Answer 5

// Get pixel data
var imageData = context.getImageData(x, y, width, height);

// Color at (x,y) position
var color = [];
color['red'] = imageData.data[((y*(imageData.width*4)) + (x*4)) + 0];
color['green'] = imageData.data[((y*(imageData.width*4)) + (x*4)) + 1];
color['blue'] = imageData.data[((y*(imageData.width*4)) + (x*4)) + 2];
color['alpha'] = imageData.data[((y*(imageData.width*4)) + (x*4)) + 3];

Answer 6

There's a section about pixel manipulation in the W3C documentation.

Here's an example on how to invert an image:

var context = document.getElementById('myCanvas').getContext('2d');

// Get the CanvasPixelArray from the given coordinates and dimensions.
var imgd = context.getImageData(x, y, width, height);
var pix = imgd.data;

// Loop over each pixel and invert the color.
for (var i = 0, n = pix.length; i < n; i += 4) {
    pix[i  ] = 255 - pix[i  ]; // red
    pix[i+1] = 255 - pix[i+1]; // green
    pix[i+2] = 255 - pix[i+2]; // blue
    // i+3 is alpha (the fourth element)
}

// Draw the ImageData at the given (x,y) coordinates.
context.putImageData(imgd, x, y);