Tessel

Dependency-light image I/O and mutable RGBA8 image surfaces for Ruby graphics.

Features · Installation · Quick Start

Tessel is the shared pixel layer for the rbgfx ecosystem. It reads and writes common image formats and gives drawing code a small, predictable RGBA8 surface.

• PNG decoding and encoding, including filters, Adam7 interlace, palettes, and text metadata.
• PPM (P3/P6) and BMP (24/32-bit) input and output.
• Straight-alpha RGBA8 pixels with row-major, top-down storage.
• Clipped rectangles, horizontal spans, alpha blits, masks, crop, and resize.
• Median-cut palettes, fixed palettes, nearest-color mapping, and ordered or Floyd–Steinberg dithering for indexed image output.
• Explicit decode, unsupported-format, and pixel-limit errors.
• Optional RBGL framebuffer conversion.

Add Tessel to your Gemfile:

gem "tessel"

Then run:

bundle install

Or install the released gem directly:

gem install tessel

• Ruby 3.1 or newer.
• No runtime gems beyond Ruby's standard library are required.

require "tessel"

image = Tessel::Image.new(320, 180, fill: "#101827")
image.fill_rect(20, 20, 80, 40, "#e85d75")
image.write("out.png", filter: :adaptive)

copy = Tessel.read("out.png")
puts [copy.width, copy.height, copy[20, 20]].inspect

palette = Tessel::Quantize.palette_for([image, copy], colors: 32)
indices, palette = Tessel::Quantize.quantize(image, palette: palette, dither: :floyd_steinberg)
puts "#{indices.bytesize} indexed pixels, #{palette.length} colors"

Use fill_rect, hspan, blit, and blit_mask for drawing. Image operations clip to the surface boundaries.

Tessel::Quantize.palette_for(images, colors:) samples visible pixels from one image or an array of images and builds a deterministic median-cut RGB palette. Quantize.quantize(image, palette:, dither:) returns a binary string with one palette index per pixel and the palette used. Supported dithering modes are :none, :ordered, and :floyd_steinberg. Transparent pixels do not affect palette generation. fixed_palette returns the 6×6×6 color cube plus 40 gray levels; web_safe_palette returns the 216 web-safe colors.

bundle install
bundle exec rake verify

Performance scripts are available for local, workload-specific checks:

ruby bench/decode_bench.rb
ruby bench/encode_bench.rb
ruby bench/raster_bench.rb

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome at rbgfx/tessel.

MIT