Simple software rasterization library in C, designed for use with Canopy on macOS.

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About

Picasso is a lightweight 2D graphics library written in C.
It provides low-level framebuffer manipulation and basic drawing routines on the CPU — no GPU acceleration or external dependencies.

Originally created to work with the Canopy windowing system, Picasso is focused on simplicity, performance, and clarity.

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Project Status

Picasso is actively under development and part of a learning-oriented project.
It is stable enough for small-scale use, but the API is still evolving and subject to change.

Warning

Not production-ready. The API is not stable and may change frequently.

Tip

Great for understanding pixel-level rendering and alpha blending in pure C!

Features

• Software rendering to a pixel buffer (backbuffer)
• Basic blitting and image compositing
• Color filling and canvas clearing
• Sprite sheet support (WIP)
• BMP image loading (PNG/PPM support planned)
• No external libraries — pure C
• Alpha blending support

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Design Goals

• Be small, focused, and embeddable
• Stay dependency-free
• Serve as a CPU-based software rasterizer
• Work seamlessly with the Canopy framebuffer system
• Support real-world use cases like tilemaps and sprites

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Quick Example

picasso_backbuffer* bf = picasso_create_backbuffer(400, 300);
picasso_clear_backbuffer(bf, CANOPY_BLACK);

color rect[100 * 100];
picasso_fill_backbuffer(&(picasso_backbuffer){ .width = 100, .height = 100, .pixels = (uint32_t*)rect }, CANOPY_GOLD);

picasso_blit_bitmap(bf, rect, 100, 100, 150, 100);
canopy_swap_backbuffer(win, (framebuffer*)bf);
canopy_present_buffer(win);

📌 Planned Features

• CPU-based drawing
• Bitmap loading (BMP)
• Alpha blending
• PNG and PPM image decoding
• Sprite sheet support
• 9-slice rendering
• Text rendering using bitmap fonts
• Image rotation and scaling
• Basic shape drawing (lines, circles, rects)

Note

Picasso is intentionally minimal and built for use with Canopy, but can be used standalone in other C projects.

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License & Usage

This project is free to use for educational and experimental purposes.

Note

This is a side project created to explore graphics pipelines and pixel rendering — not a general-purpose image library.

• No dependencies or external libraries
• Great for learning graphics from scratch
• Not intended for use in production
• A reference for building simple 2D renderers in C

Feel free to explore, fork, and build upon it!