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@remy
Last active May 5, 2026 03:17
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Trims the surrounding transparent pixels from a canvas
// MIT http://rem.mit-license.org
function trim(c) {
var ctx = c.getContext('2d'),
copy = document.createElement('canvas').getContext('2d'),
pixels = ctx.getImageData(0, 0, c.width, c.height),
l = pixels.data.length,
i,
bound = {
top: null,
left: null,
right: null,
bottom: null
},
x, y;
for (i = 0; i < l; i += 4) {
if (pixels.data[i+3] !== 0) {
x = (i / 4) % c.width;
y = ~~((i / 4) / c.width);
if (bound.top === null) {
bound.top = y;
}
if (bound.left === null) {
bound.left = x;
} else if (x < bound.left) {
bound.left = x;
}
if (bound.right === null) {
bound.right = x;
} else if (bound.right < x) {
bound.right = x;
}
if (bound.bottom === null) {
bound.bottom = y;
} else if (bound.bottom < y) {
bound.bottom = y;
}
}
}
var trimHeight = bound.bottom - bound.top,
trimWidth = bound.right - bound.left,
trimmed = ctx.getImageData(bound.left, bound.top, trimWidth, trimHeight);
copy.canvas.width = trimWidth;
copy.canvas.height = trimHeight;
copy.putImageData(trimmed, 0, 0);
// open new window with trimmed image:
return copy.canvas;
}
@joloco

joloco commented Feb 13, 2012

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Great code, just what I needed! The only thing I changed was that bound.bottom and bound.right both need incrementing by one after the loop, or the bottom-most and right-most rows of pixels get trimmed off.

@jamespcole

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Awesome, thanks for that

ghost commented Apr 26, 2013

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Hello remy, just wondering if is possible to add an example.
Thank you for the code.

@smaier

smaier commented Jun 11, 2014

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thanks a lot! Great

@EricJLD

EricJLD commented Jun 15, 2014

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Hello Remy, your tool seems to be what I am looking for. great I hv been spending my wknd browsing over many sites.
however, i'm very new in html/js ...
may I you to add some more lines to make it a full concrete example with an image file that I could copy/past and make work. then, I will adapt to my need ? sorry for this request but it's necessary for me to get started. thk you very much in avance. Eric

@drumfiend21

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Using this in a school project. Thank you very much

@br750

br750 commented Nov 27, 2015

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Awesome, just too much guy ;-)

@onassar

onassar commented Feb 5, 2016

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@joloco Any chance you have your code for this, so many years later?

@tomswatermelon

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Man this saves my life, thanks!

@WingMrL

WingMrL commented Dec 2, 2016

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Thank you very much !

@huanle0610

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Wooh, awesome!
Working with konvajs, I use it like this:

window.open(trim(layer.children[77].toCanvas()).toDataURL());

@nnyit

nnyit commented May 22, 2017

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This isn't working for me, it is only trimming 1px on each dimension.

@holethienthanh

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Thanks a lot.

@peterchibunna

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Awesome and intelligent code! I just modified it to add padding to the image cropped.

@timdown

timdown commented Jul 24, 2017

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Thanks, just what I needed. One tiny improvement: you could use the original canvas element's ownerDocument rather than document to create the copy so that they both exist in the same document. This could be important if your canvas comes from an iframe which has different fonts loaded to the main document and you want to draw text on the trimmed canvas (which happens to be exactly what I want to do).

@timdown

timdown commented Jul 25, 2017

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Also, this crops one pixel too much on the right and bottom. You need to add one to bounds.bottom and bounds.right (or to trimWidth and trimHeight).

@timdown

timdown commented Jul 26, 2017

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I created my own with some optimizations to minimize the number of pixels examined:

https://gist.github.com/timdown/021d9c8f2aabc7092df564996f5afbbf

@ranasoyab

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Thank you very much !

@TomFranssen

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Is it possible to modify this to trim white pixels also?

@onassar

onassar commented Aug 27, 2018

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I'm with @TomFranssen
Anyone have a modification that can trim all consistent pixels? (eg. like Photoshop's trim feature).

@minhnhatspk

minhnhatspk commented Dec 26, 2018

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Thanks for sharing code.
Your solution and this solution https://github.com/szimek/signature_pad/issues/49#issuecomment-260976909 have the same result.
but I don't know why they don't work with a small canvas.
I receive a cropped base64 string like this data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAJoAAACwCAYAAAD3yHdHAAAWqklEQ…R2XRtoY4vDik3+K4DY27CgyngC092SXi3pl3sR9BxnnAL/C1ghAjtx4zZSAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC.
It does not display since it is broken.

@shaangidwani

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its not working on ipad. can someone help us urgently.

@hangj

hangj commented Jun 5, 2019

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var trimHeight = bound.bottom - bound.top,
trimWidth = bound.right - bound.left,
SHOULD BE:
var trimHeight = bound.bottom - bound.top + 1,
trimWidth = bound.right - bound.left + 1,

@javix

javix commented Nov 4, 2020

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I created my own with some optimizations to minimize the number of pixels examined:

https://gist.github.com/timdown/021d9c8f2aabc7092df564996f5afbbf

This function is almost 300% faster.

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