Nonsuch Pattern

This image is generated by starting with randomly allocated unique colours and then swapping pixels to make them generally closer in colour to their neighbouring pixels.

The outcome of this operation may be different depending on how pixel swaps are prioritised and when the swapping is stopped.

In this variant a fine grained mixture of smooth transitions and sharp edges among colours is emerging.

As pixels are only affected by their closest pixels, specks of colour may only grow up to a small size before being constrained by neighbouring specks; nevertheless certain shapes emerge that span more widely, over different colours.

At the largest scale, different patterns also appear to start forming from the shapes but soon end up constraining each other.

Image Licence: Public Domain (CC0).