LobstersSaturday · May 16, 2026FREE

5× faster fast_blur in image-rs

The image-rs library, a popular Rust crate for image processing, has received a major performance boost to its fast_blur function. According to a blog post by apas.tel, the optimization achieves a 5× speedup by leveraging SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data) instructions and rewriting the algorithm to be more cache-friendly. The new implementation processes pixels in parallel, reducing the number of memory accesses and improving throughput. Benchmarks show that blurring a 1920x1080 image now takes approximately 10 milliseconds, down from 50 milliseconds. This improvement is particularly beneficial for applications requiring real-time image processing, such as video filters or interactive photo editors. The changes have been merged into the main branch of image-rs and are available in version 0.25.2. Developers can update their dependencies to take advantage of the faster blur without any code changes.