How to pixelate an image with canvas and javascript

Question

I've been experimenting a bit with the canvas element and was curious how to pull off an effect.

I've somewhat got what I'm looking for from a collection of tutorials and demos, but I need some assistance getting the rest of the way there. What I'm looking for is to pixelate an image on mouseover, then refocus/un-pixelate it on mouseout. You can see a good example of the effect at http://www.cropp.com/ when mousing over the blocks that are below the main carousel.

Here is a link to a fiddle I started. The fiddle won't work because you can't use cross domain images (womp womp), but you can still see my code thus far. When mousing over my canvas object I'm able to pixelate the image, but it's kind of backwards to what I'm attempting to get. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

var pixelation = 40,
    fps = 120,
    timeInterval = 1000 / fps, 
    canvas = document.getElementById('photo'),
    context = canvas.getContext('2d'),
    imgObj = new Image();

imgObj.src = 'images/me.jpg';
imgObj.onload = function () {    
    context.drawImage(imgObj, 0, 0);
};

canvas.addEventListener('mouseover', function() {
    var interval = setInterval(function () {
        context.drawImage(imgObj, 0, 0);

        if (pixelation < 1) {
            clearInterval(interval);
            pixelation = 40;
        } else {
            pixelate(context, canvas.width, canvas.height, 0, 0);
        }
    }, timeInterval);
});

function pixelate(context, srcWidth, srcHeight, xPos, yPos) {

    var sourceX = xPos,
        sourceY = yPos,
        imageData = context.getImageData(sourceX, sourceY, srcWidth, srcHeight),
        data = imageData.data;

    for (var y = 0; y < srcHeight; y += pixelation) {
        for (var x = 0; x < srcWidth; x += pixelation) {

            var red = data[((srcWidth * y) + x) * 4],
                green = data[((srcWidth * y) + x) * 4 + 1],
                blue = data[((srcWidth * y) + x) * 4 + 2];

            for (var n = 0; n < pixelation; n++) {
                for (var m = 0; m < pixelation; m++) {
                    if (x + m < srcWidth) {
                        data[((srcWidth * (y + n)) + (x + m)) * 4] = red;
                        data[((srcWidth * (y + n)) + (x + m)) * 4 + 1] = green;
                        data[((srcWidth * (y + n)) + (x + m)) * 4 + 2] = blue;
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }

    // overwrite original image
    context.putImageData(imageData, xPos, yPos);
    pixelation -= 1;
}

Answer 1

You don't need to iterate pixel buffer to create a pixelating effect.

Simply turn off image smoothing and enlarge a small version of the image to the canvas. This will also mean you can use any image as source (CORS-wise).

Example:

Fiddle demo

// get a block size (see demo for this approach)
var size = blocks.value / 100,
    w = canvas.width * size,
    h = canvas.height * size;

// draw the original image at a fraction of the final size
ctx.drawImage(img, 0, 0, w, h);

// turn off image aliasing
ctx.msImageSmoothingEnabled = false;
ctx.mozImageSmoothingEnabled = false;
ctx.webkitImageSmoothingEnabled = false;
ctx.imageSmoothingEnabled = false;

// enlarge the minimized image to full size    
ctx.drawImage(canvas, 0, 0, w, h, 0, 0, canvas.width, canvas.height);

In the demo you can animate this effect to see that the performance is very good compared to an pixel iterating method as the browser takes care of the "pixelation" internally in compiled code.