Mesh Gradient

Random control points, dithered to kill the banding.

images.gradient · v1 · renderer canvas

10 control points · Gaussian · warp 0.18 · 1.0-level dither

Each pixel is offset by less than one output level, from an 8×8 Bayer matrix, before being rounded to eight bits. That moves the rounding decision from pixel to pixel, so the twenty-pixel bands a smooth gradient would otherwise show break up into a texture finer than a display can resolve. Turn it off to see what it is doing.

[data-canvas-stage] { display: none; }

Drawn in the browser

This generator does not send you an image. The server sends a short description of one — the parameters below, plus a 32-byte key — and the drawing is done here, from the same byte stream the server would have used. That needs JavaScript, so with it switched off there is nothing to show.

The description itself is still public: /api/v1/g/images.gradient returns it, and the maths is in resources/js.

10 control points · Gaussian · warp 0.18 · 1.0-level dither

Controls · from schema()

Width

256 2048

Height

256 2048

Control points

2 18

Each one holds a colour and pulls the field towards it.

Blend

Softness

0.18 1.8

The Gaussian width, measured in the typical spacing between control points rather than in pixels — so adding points does not also change how soft the blend is.

Shepard exponent

1 8

Only used by the stained-glass blend. Higher values flatten the cell interiors and tighten the boundaries between them.

Domain warp

0 0.6

Displaces each pixel through a noise field before the blend is evaluated. The isolines stop being circles and start folding around each other, which is what makes a gradient look poured rather than computed.

Warp zoom

0.4 8

Dither

0 4

Ordered dither amplitude, in output levels. One level is the right answer; zero is there so you can see the banding it prevents.

Colour

Palette size

2 12

Grain

0 0.06

Film grain over the finished render, on top of the dither. The two do different jobs: the dither hides quantisation, the grain gives the surface a texture.

Entropy source

Picking a source changes the story on the receipt, never the quality: anything below class A is mixed with the OS CSPRNG before it reaches you. This result actually came from NIST Randomness Beacon.

seed token 4QFJTP6WW4DRCGMZ6PAG8V0DYW

Re-render keeps this token. Generate replaces it. That is the whole idea.

Burned into the corner before the file is written, so the image keeps its provenance wherever it ends up:

entropy in

16 bytes

stream used

243 bytes

rejections

duration

191 µs

palette

stops

output levels

256

Seed receipt

Class B · Public beacon

NIST Beacon pulse #1,941,315 — chained to every pulse before it, and signed.

Published openly — anyone can look this value up after the fact.

source: NIST Randomness Beacon
observed: 2026-09-14T17:21:00+00:00
latency: 114ms
mixed with: csprng — always

https://beacon.nist.gov/beacon/2.0/chain/2/pulse/1941315 ↗

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The token is the seed, so this link recomputes the result rather than looking it up. No database, and it works for as long as v1 does.

This page and /api/v1/g/images.gradient run the same code. There is no private endpoint.

Mesh Gradient

Result

Measurements

Seed receipt

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