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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 if you're using the System.Drawing.dll that ships with the .NET-Framework
    • Install Blurhash-System.Drawing.Common if you're using the System.Drawing.Common-NuGet package. This package offers the same interface as System.Drawing.dll but for DotNetStandard 2.0 and cross-platform usage.

  2. Instantiate an Encoder or Decoder
    The Encoder-class will generate a Blurhash-string out of your image while the Decoder-class will decode the Blurhash-string to a blurred preview-image.

  3. Optionally set a progress-callback.
    If you're handling large files (which is not recommended) and want to provide user-feedback (that is, you're not on a server), you can set the ProgressCallback-Property. Your callback will be called with a value in the interval [0.0, 1.0] depending on encoding or decoding process.

  4. Start the operation

    • Call Encode and pass the image as well as the number of components for each axis to start encoding.
    • Call Decode and pass the Blurhash-string as well as the desired output size to start decoding.

Using an unsupported image manipulation library

Install the NuGet-Package Blurhash.Core

Encoding an image to a Blurhash string

  1. Convert all pixels of your image into a 2-dimensional array of Pixel-entries (those represent each pixel by three doubles for each color channel)
    Note that the first dimension is the X-Coordinate while the second dimension is the Y-Coordinate.
    In order to convert an integer value in the interval [0..255] to its double representation you can use MathUtils.SRgbToLinear.
  2. Instantiate a CoreEncoder
  3. Optionally set a progress-callback
  4. Start the operation by calling CoreEncode with the array and the number of components for each axis

Decoding a Blurhash string into an image

  1. Instantiate a CoreDecoder
  2. Optionally set a progress-callback
  3. Start the operation by calling CoreDecode with the desired output size.
  4. You receive a 2-dimensional array of Pixel-entries which you need to decode into your image representation.
    Note that the first dimension is the X-Coordinate while the second dimension is the Y-Coordinate.
    In order to convert a double to an integer value in the interval [0..255] you can use MathUtils.LinearToSRgb.

Sharing your library specific implementation

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.

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.Blurhash Bridge-Library to use Blurhash with the System.Drawing.dll namespace of the .NET-Framework. This is only available in Windows projects as it uses GDI+
  • Blurhash-System.Drawing.Common Bridge-Library to use Blurhash with the System.Drawing.Common NuGet-Library in DotNetStandard