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Pixel Bender Technology Center
Adobe Pixel Bender technology delivers a common image and video processing infrastructure which provides automatic runtime optimization on heterogeneous hardware. You can use the Pixel Bender kernel language to implement image processing algorithms (filters or effects) in a hardware-independent manner. The Pixel Bender graph language is an XML-based language for combining individual pixel-processing operations (kernels) into more complex Pixel Bender filters.
The Pixel Bender Toolkit includes the Pixel Bender kernel language and graph language, the Pixel Bender Toolkit IDE (an integrated development environment for Pixel Bender), sample filters, and documentation.
Pixel Bender downloads
Pixel Bender Toolkit
This download provides the Pixel Bender Toolkit 2.1 for Macintosh and Windows. Installation and setup instructions are available within the Pixel Bender release notes:
- Pixel Bender Toolkit 2.0 for Macintosh (DMG, 77 MB)
- Pixel Bender Toolkit 2.0 for Windows (ZIP, 48.8 MB)
Pixel Bender documentation
These files provide more information about the Pixel Bender language and how to use the Pixel Bender kernel and graph languages to develop filters:
- Pixel Bender Language Reference (PDF, 440 KB)
- Pixel Bender Developer's Guide (PDF, 1.2 MB)
Pixel Bender Plug-in for Photoshop CS5
The Pixel Bender Plug-in for Adobe Photoshop CS5 for 32-bit and 64-bit on Macintosh and Windows systems is available on Adobe Labs. Learn more
Learning Pixel Bender
Check out these resources to get you started with Pixel Bender development and the Pixel Bender Toolkit.
Tutorial: Effects with the Pixel Bender Toolkit
Get an overview of what you can do with the Pixel Bender Toolkit by following this tutorial series by Kevin Goldsmith, engineering manager for the Adobe Image Foundation team in the Core Technology group:
Instructional presentations
In these tutorial presentations, Lee Brimelow shows you the basics of creating and exporting filters, and animating parameters of a filter:
- Introduction to Pixel Bender: Part 1 (basics of creating Pixel Bender filters)
- Introduction to Pixel Bender: Part 2 (exporting a Pixel Bender filter, loading it into Flash, and applying it to an image)
- Animating Pixel Bender filters (animating filter parameters using a tweening library)
Adobe TV also features some informative instructional videos on using Pixel Bender:
- Pixel Bender custom filters (Lee Brimelow, ADC Presents)
- Pixel Bender filters (Paul Burnett, Flash Downunder)
- Pixel Bender unleashed (Ryan Taylor, MAX 2008)
Pixel Bender and Adobe tools
For additional information on using Pixel Bender in Adobe Flash Professional, read Working with Pixel Bender shaders in Programming ActionScript 3 and Shader class in the ActionScript Component and Language Reference. This documentation contains a detailed description of the objects you can use with Pixel Bender in Flash Professional. Also read these articles in the Adobe Developer Connection:
- Pixel Bender basics for Flash (Charles Ward)
- Pixel Bender basics for Flex and AIR (Charles Ward)
- Using Pixel Bender with Flash Builder 4 beta as a number crunching engine (Elad Elrom)
Programming in Pixel Bender
Pixel Bender development offers many advantages:
- Low learning curve: Pixel Bender offers a small number of tools that are sufficient to write complex image-processing algorithms. Learning Pixel Bender is easier than learning C/C++ and each application's plug-in SDK. You do not need to know any graphics shading language or multithreading APIs.
- Parallel processing: Pixel Bender allows the same filter to run efficiently on different GPU and CPU architectures, including multicore and multiprocessor systems. It delivers excellent image processing performance in Adobe products.
- Supports all bit-depths: The same kernel runs in 8-bit/16-bit/32-bit within the application.
- Support by multiple Adobe applications: Pixel Bender is integrated with multiple Adobe applications, such as After Effects, Flash, and Photoshop. It allows you to develop filters that are portable among various Adobe products. You can add your Pixel Bender filters and effects to those already offered in those applications. There is an active Pixel Bender Exchange where developers share their filters.
Engage: Adobe Cookbooks 2.0
Find, share, and comment on code with the developer community.
Pixel Bender is best suited for the kind of algorithms in which processing of any pixel has minimum dependence on the values of other pixels. For example, you can efficiently write a kernel to manipulate brightness of the image because brightness of each pixel can be changed independently. You would not want to use Pixel Bender to compute a histogram, because a histogram requires the values of all the pixels in an image.
For more details, please download the Pixel Bender Toolkit, the Pixel Bender Developer's Guide, and the Pixel Bender Language Reference.
