Sorting Color [Photoshop Pixel Sorting Effect]

With my experience in Photoshop so far, there are millions of different ways to distort images. However, there are few that appeal to me as much as a simple sorting effect does. The distortion technique I am speaking about is called pixel sorting. I find this effect so interesting and fun to look at because it makes the pixels of the images appear as is they are flow off the page. In addition to this, it also ends up making very cool and sharp contrasts in color which provides a very unique texture to an image. So before we get started let me explain what this weird sorting method is!

What is pixel sorting?

This effect carries out the process of isolating horizontal lines of pixels and then sorting them according to a specific criteria. This may be hue, hex code, saturation, or many other options. Some of my most recent examples are below!

The Tutorial

So now that we understand what this effect is and does, lets jump right into the tutorial!

Step 1:

Open the picture you wish to pixel sort. In this tutorial, I am using a nice picture of some clouds!

Step 2:

Unfortunately, pixel sorting only works from right to left or left to right. In this example, I want the pixels to appear being sorted from bottom to top.

So to work around this, go ahead and rotate your image 90 degrees with Ctl + T (Command + T on a Mac).

Once you rotated your image, hit Enter.

To make sure we are only affected our image with this effect, hover your mouse over the thumbnail of your image in the layers panel and do Ctl + Left Click (Command + Left Click on a Mac). This makes sure we are only affecting the area surrounded by the dotted line.

Step 3:

Now go to the Filter menu at the top of the screen and select Stylize, then Wind.

Step 4:

Now that we are in the wind effect menu, select the Stagger method and From the Left as the direction

Once you have done this, click OK.

To give the pixel a little extra sort, you can add the effect again by going to the Filter menu at the top of the screen and clicking Wind at the top of the drop-down.

Step 5:

Using Ctl + T (Command + T on a Mac) again, rotate your image back to the start and there you have it, your very own pixel sorted image!

I hope this tutorial helped, but if there is any confusion, leave me a comment down below and I will answer it right away!

- Jared

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