Question

I’m trying to create a thumbnail image on the client side using javascript and a canvas element, but when I shrink the image down, it looks terrible. It looks as if it was downsized in photoshop with the resampling set to ‘Nearest Neighbor’ instead of Bicubic. I know its possible to get this to look right, because this site can do it just fine using a canvas as well. I’ve tried using the same code they do as shown in the “[Source]” link, but it still looks terrible. Is there something I’m missing, some setting that needs to be set or something?

EDIT:

I’m trying to resize a jpg. I have tried resizing the same jpg on the linked site and in photoshop, and it looks fine when downsized.

Here is the relevant code:

reader.onloadend = function(e)
{
    var img = new Image();
    var ctx = canvas.getContext("2d");
    var canvasCopy = document.createElement("canvas");
    var copyContext = canvasCopy.getContext("2d");

    img.onload = function()
    {
        var ratio = 1;

        if(img.width > maxWidth)
            ratio = maxWidth / img.width;
        else if(img.height > maxHeight)
            ratio = maxHeight / img.height;

        canvasCopy.width = img.width;
        canvasCopy.height = img.height;
        copyContext.drawImage(img, 0, 0);

        canvas.width = img.width * ratio;
        canvas.height = img.height * ratio;
        ctx.drawImage(canvasCopy, 0, 0, canvasCopy.width, canvasCopy.height, 0, 0, canvas.width, canvas.height);
    };

    img.src = reader.result;
}

EDIT2:

Seems I was mistaken, the linked website wasn’t doing any better of a job of downsizing the image. I tried the other methods suggested and none of them look any better. This is what the different methods resulted in:

Photoshop:

Canvas:

Image with image-rendering: optimizeQuality set and scaled with width/height:

Image with image-rendering: optimizeQuality set and scaled with -moz-transform:

Canvas resize on pixastic:

I guess this means firefox isn’t using bicubic sampling like its supposed to. I’ll just have to wait until they actually add it.

EDIT3:

Original Image

Answer 1

So what do you do if all the browsers (actually, Chrome 5 gave me quite good one) won’t give you good enough resampling quality? You implement them yourself then! Oh come on, we’re entering the new age of Web 3.0, HTML5 compliant browsers, super optimized JIT javascript compilers, multi-core(†) machines, with tons of memory, what are you afraid of? Hey, there’s the word java in javascript, so that should guarantee the performance, right? Behold, the thumbnail generating code:

// returns a function that calculates lanczos weight
function lanczosCreate(lobes) {
    return function(x) {
        if (x > lobes)
            return 0;
        x *= Math.PI;
        if (Math.abs(x) < 1e-16)
            return 1;
        var xx = x / lobes;
        return Math.sin(x) * Math.sin(xx) / x / xx;
    };
}

// elem: canvas element, img: image element, sx: scaled width, lobes: kernel radius
function thumbnailer(elem, img, sx, lobes) {
    this.canvas = elem;
    elem.width = img.width;
    elem.height = img.height;
    elem.style.display = "none";
    this.ctx = elem.getContext("2d");
    this.ctx.drawImage(img, 0, 0);
    this.img = img;
    this.src = this.ctx.getImageData(0, 0, img.width, img.height);
    this.dest = {
        width : sx,
        height : Math.round(img.height * sx / img.width),
    };
    this.dest.data = new Array(this.dest.width * this.dest.height * 3);
    this.lanczos = lanczosCreate(lobes);
    this.ratio = img.width / sx;
    this.rcp_ratio = 2 / this.ratio;
    this.range2 = Math.ceil(this.ratio * lobes / 2);
    this.cacheLanc = {};
    this.center = {};
    this.icenter = {};
    setTimeout(this.process1, 0, this, 0);
}

thumbnailer.prototype.process1 = function(self, u) {
    self.center.x = (u + 0.5) * self.ratio;
    self.icenter.x = Math.floor(self.center.x);
    for (var v = 0; v < self.dest.height; v++) {
        self.center.y = (v + 0.5) * self.ratio;
        self.icenter.y = Math.floor(self.center.y);
        var a, r, g, b;
        a = r = g = b = 0;
        for (var i = self.icenter.x - self.range2; i <= self.icenter.x + self.range2; i++) {
            if (i < 0 || i >= self.src.width)
                continue;
            var f_x = Math.floor(1000 * Math.abs(i - self.center.x));
            if (!self.cacheLanc[f_x])
                self.cacheLanc[f_x] = {};
            for (var j = self.icenter.y - self.range2; j <= self.icenter.y + self.range2; j++) {
                if (j < 0 || j >= self.src.height)
                    continue;
                var f_y = Math.floor(1000 * Math.abs(j - self.center.y));
                if (self.cacheLanc[f_x][f_y] == undefined)
                    self.cacheLanc[f_x][f_y] = self.lanczos(Math.sqrt(Math.pow(f_x * self.rcp_ratio, 2)
                            + Math.pow(f_y * self.rcp_ratio, 2)) / 1000);
                weight = self.cacheLanc[f_x][f_y];
                if (weight > 0) {
                    var idx = (j * self.src.width + i) * 4;
                    a += weight;
                    r += weight * self.src.data[idx];
                    g += weight * self.src.data[idx + 1];
                    b += weight * self.src.data[idx + 2];
                }
            }
        }
        var idx = (v * self.dest.width + u) * 3;
        self.dest.data[idx] = r / a;
        self.dest.data[idx + 1] = g / a;
        self.dest.data[idx + 2] = b / a;
    }

    if (++u < self.dest.width)
        setTimeout(self.process1, 0, self, u);
    else
        setTimeout(self.process2, 0, self);
};
thumbnailer.prototype.process2 = function(self) {
    self.canvas.width = self.dest.width;
    self.canvas.height = self.dest.height;
    self.ctx.drawImage(self.img, 0, 0, self.dest.width, self.dest.height);
    self.src = self.ctx.getImageData(0, 0, self.dest.width, self.dest.height);
    var idx, idx2;
    for (var i = 0; i < self.dest.width; i++) {
        for (var j = 0; j < self.dest.height; j++) {
            idx = (j * self.dest.width + i) * 3;
            idx2 = (j * self.dest.width + i) * 4;
            self.src.data[idx2] = self.dest.data[idx];
            self.src.data[idx2 + 1] = self.dest.data[idx + 1];
            self.src.data[idx2 + 2] = self.dest.data[idx + 2];
        }
    }
    self.ctx.putImageData(self.src, 0, 0);
    self.canvas.style.display = "block";
};

…with which you can produce results like these!

so anyway, here is a ‘fixed’ version of your example:

img.onload = function() {
    var canvas = document.createElement("canvas");
    new thumbnailer(canvas, img, 188, 3); //this produces lanczos3
    // but feel free to raise it up to 8. Your client will appreciate
    // that the program makes full use of his machine.
    document.body.appendChild(canvas);
};

Now it’s time to pit your best browsers out there and see which one will least likely increase your client’s blood pressure!

Umm, where’s my sarcasm tag?

(since many parts of the code is based on Anrieff Gallery Generator is it also covered under GPL2? I don’t know)

† actually due to limitation of javascript, multi-core is not supported.