idea: depject image manipulation app based around canvas

[dominictarr]

I think a modular app for doing stuff with canvas could be a really nice example app for depject.
image manipulation is a natural fit for modular stuff (much like music software is) there are generators and effects and transforms etc.

it could all be based around the canvas, because you can do pretty much anything with the canvas. If it generated an ecosystem of scriptable image transforms that would be very useful for a range of things, and you could run from scripts either with a headless electron, or via node-canvas (great if you can get it to build!)

but if it also had a UI that you ran inside the electron or the browser then you'd have a pretty powerful demonstration of depject.

[dominictarr]

I'm thinking something like a chain of synchronous function that take a canvas and return a modified canvas. they could also have input parameters and if those change you'd re-run the steps that have changed.

[ahdinosaur]

yeah this is a cool idea. rather than a canvas, i'd recommend using ndarray as your inter-operable format, specifically i discovered a whole heap of modules using ndarray in a common format for pixels, which i documented at livejs/ndpixel. the only bit missing is which color format is being used (in case you receive an unknown set of pixels), but you could standardize on RGB here if you want.

[dominictarr]

there may indeed be a place for that, but you are gonna have to write it to a canvas to display it anyway -- and also you'll have to redo all the basic stuff, like drawing a line, when everyone already understands canvas.

ndarray probably gains you stuff for doing really interesting stuff... but seems like a bigger upfront investment.

[ahdinosaur]

yeah very true. 😄