xscaled

xscaled is a cross-platform open-source library and API for image and texture scaling. It provides high-quality resampling and color-management features for graphics applications, game engines, and image-editing tools. The library implements multiple scaling algorithms, including nearest neighbor, bilinear, bicubic, Lanczos, and other higher-order filters, with a focus on artifact reduction and preserved detail. It also supports color-space conversion, gamma handling, and linear-light workflows, enabling consistent results across source and destination formats.

xscaled is designed with a modular architecture. The core is written in C with a plugin interface that allows alternative scaling backends to be plugged in at runtime. Optional GPU-accelerated paths are provided for modern hardware via SIMD-optimized CPU code and compute shaders or other GPU backends, where available. The API supports in-memory image buffers, streaming data, multi-threaded processing, and batch scaling.

The project provides a stable C API and bindings for several languages, including Python, Rust, and JavaScript. It can import and export common image formats through built-in decoders or via integration with other libraries, and it supports color management workflows using ICC profiles where applicable. The library emphasizes portability and a lightweight footprint, with attention to deterministic results and reproducibility.

xscaled originated as an open-source effort in the mid-2010s and is maintained by a community of volunteers and contributors. It is distributed under a permissive open-source license and is used by hobbyist projects, indie games, and some open-source editors as a drop-in replacement for general-purpose image scaling.