This paper describes a 1.2 V 12 b 60 MS/s CMOS analog front-end (AFE) employing low-power and flexible design techniques for image signal processing. An op-amp preset technique and programmable capacitor array scheme are used in a variable gain amplifier to reduce the power consumption with a small area of the AFE. A pipelined analog-to-digital converter with variable resolution and a clock detector provide operation flexibility with regard to resolution and speed. The AFE is fabricated in a 0.13 ${mu}m$ CMOS process and shows a gain error of 0.68 LSB with 0.0352 dB gain steps and a differential/integral nonlinearity of 0.64/1.58 LSB. The signal-to-noise ratio of the AFE is 59.7 dB at a 60 MHz sampling frequency. The AFE occupies 1.73 $mm^2$ and dissipates 64 mW from a 1.2 V supply. Also, the performance of the proposed AFE is demonstrated by an implementation of an image signal processing platform for digital camcorders.