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BlurHash

BlurHash is a compact representation of a placeholder for an image.

Why would you want this?

Does your designer cry every time you load their beautifully designed screen, and it is full of empty boxes because all the images have not loaded yet? Does your database engineer cry when you want to solve this by trying to cram little thumbnail images into your data to show as placeholders?

BlurHash will solve your problems! How? Like this:

You can also see nice examples and try it out yourself at blurha.sh!

How does it work?

In short, BlurHash takes an image, and gives you a short string (only 20-30 characters!) that represents the placeholder for this image. You do this on the backend of your service, and store the string along with the image. When you send data to your client, you send both the URL to the image, and the BlurHash string. Your client then takes the string, and decodes it into an image that it shows while the real image is loading over the network. The string is short enough that it comfortably fits into whatever data format you use. For instance, it can easily be added as a field in a JSON object.

In summary:

   

More Information

More information can be found in the base repository. Go there if you want to see the details on how BlurHash works or how to contribute your own port.

Usage

Using a supported image manipulation library

  1. Install the NuGet-Package for your image manipulation library

    • Install Blurhash.System.Drawing.Common if you're using the System.Drawing.Common-NuGet package.
    • Install Blurhash.ImageSharp if you're using SixLabors.ImageSharp
    • Install Blurhash.Core if you want to manually convert your image type for the algorithm (see below)

  2. Call Blurhasher.Encode or Blurhasher.Decode

Using a Blurhash.NET with the IServiceCollection

  1. Install the NuGet-Package for your image manipulation library
    • Install Blurhash.Microsoft.Extensions.System.Drawing if you're using the System.Drawing.Common-NuGet package.
    • Install Blurhash.Microsoft.Extensions.ImageSharp if you're using the SixLabors.ImageSharp
    • Install Blurhash.Microsoft.Extensions.Core if you want to manually convert your image type for the algorithm (see below)

Using an unsupported image manipulation library

Install the NuGet-Package Blurhash.Core (add Blurhash.Microsoft.Extensions.Core if you want to use dependency injection)

Encoding an image to a Blurhash string

  1. Write a method to convert an image from your library to a two-dimensional array of Blurhash.Pixel where the first dimension is the X-Axis and the second dimension is the Y-Axis
  2. Call Blurhash.Core.Encode with your array
  3. Encapsulate this in a static Encode method in a Library specific Blurhasher class and share your implementation by creating a PullRequest

Decoding a Blurhash string into an image

  1. Write a method to convert a two-dimensional array of Blurhash.Pixel to an image your library supports
  2. Create a two-dimensional Pixel array where the first dimension is the desired witdh of the image and the second dimension is the desired height of the image
  3. Call Blurhash.Core.Decode with this array and the input string.
  4. Call your converter-method with the Pixel array filled by Blurhash.Core.Decode
  5. Encapsulate this in a static Decode method in a Library specific Blurhasher class and share your implementation by creating a PullRequest

Sharing your code

Think about sharing your implementation, so others can use it too.
Calling it Blurhash.<Name of your image manipulation library> would help others to quickly find it on NuGet.org.

Versioning

Blurhash.NET uses Semantic Versioning (as explained https://semver.org)

Projects in this solution

This list does not contain the projects with names ending in .Test as they are the test projects for the ones listed here.

  • Blurhash.Core
    The core algorithm of blurhash. For maximum compatibility this is a .NET-Standard project.
  • Blurhash.System.Drawing.Common
    Bridge-Library to use Blurhash with the System.Drawing.Common NuGet-Library in DotNetStandard
  • Blurhash.ImageSharp
    Bridge-Library to use Blurhash with ImageSharp
  • Blurhash.Microsoft.Extensions.*
    The respective libraries that enable usage of the blurhash algorithm with an IServiceCollection
  • Benchmarks
    Used for benchmarking implementations during optimization runs