skia-canvas

GPU-accelerated, multi-threaded HTML Canvas-compatible 2D rendering for Rust and Node.js, powered by Skia.

A fork of samizdatco/skia-canvas that adds:

• F16/F32 pixel formats for HDR compositing.
• Extended color spaces: Display P3, Rec.2020, HDR10 (PQ), HLG, plus linear variants.
• OkLab gradient interpolation in OkLab, OkLCH, Lab, LCH, HSL, HWB.
• CanvasKit filter parity (ColorFilter, ImageFilter).
• Font registration from buffers without writing to disk.
• Variable font axis control (wght, wdth, opsz, slnt, custom axes).
• Linear-light premultiplied colors plumbed through paint, gradient, filter, text.
• ParagraphBuilder/Paragraph rich text with mixed styles, per-run shadows, hit-testing, line metrics.

Rust

[dependencies]
skia-canvas = { version = "0.2", default-features = false, features = ["vulkan", "freetype"] }

The stable Rust API is the crate root, re-exported through skia_canvas::prelude. Public signatures never expose skia_safe or neon types -- a compile-time pin in tests/native_studio_renderer_adapter.rs enforces this; the Node/Neon binding lives under the internal node module.

use skia_canvas::prelude::*;

let backend = Backend::new();
let mut surface = backend.create_surface(
    1920,
    1080,
    SurfaceOptions {
        color_space: LinearColorSpace::DisplayP3,
        ..SurfaceOptions::default()
    },
)?;

surface.with_canvas(|canvas| {
    canvas.clear(RgbaLinear::new_premultiplied(0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0));
    canvas.draw_rect(
        Rect::from_xywh(100.0, 100.0, 200.0, 100.0),
        &Paint::fill(RgbaLinear::opaque(1.0, 0.0, 0.0)),
    );
});

let frame = surface.read_pixels()?; // tight RGBA8, sRGB-gamma, unpremultiplied

See docs/api/native-rust.md for the reference and examples/ for runnable code.

Cargo features

| Feature | Notes | |---|---| | vulkan | Vulkan backend (Linux / Windows). | | metal | Metal backend (macOS). | | window | winit-backed event loop. | | freetype | Bundle FreeType + WOFF2 (recommended on minimal containers). | | node-addon | Register the #[neon::main] Node addon entry point. Pure-Rust consumers leave this off. |

Default feature set is empty; opt in to the backend you need.

Skia version

| skia-canvas | skia-safe | Skia milestone | |---|---|---| | 0.2.x | 0.97.x | M148 |

The Skia revision is pinned by skia-safe; bumping skia-safe is a skia-canvas minor-version event.

Node.js

The same source tree also produces the phyron-skia-canvas npm package.

npm install phyron-skia-canvas

import { Canvas } from "phyron-skia-canvas";

let canvas = new Canvas(1920, 1080, {
  colorType: "rgbaf16",
  colorSpace: "rec2020-pq", // HDR10
});

See docs/node.md for installation, platform support (Linux / Docker / AWS Lambda / Next.js), the JavaScript API, and benchmarks.

Acknowledgements

Built on top of the rust-skia project (skia-safe + skia-bindings). Forked from samizdatco/skia-canvas; many thanks to its contributors.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.

© 2020–2026 Samizdat Drafting Co., Phyron AB and contributors.