Overview

About Image objects

pymaging.image.Image vs pymaging.image.LoadedImage

There are two main classes for representing an image in pymaging, pymaging.image.Image and pymaging.image.LoadedImage. Other than their constructor their APIs are the same. The difference is that pymaging.image.Image didn’t load all the image data from the file yet, whereas pymaging.image.LoadedImage did. As a general rule, any format should use pymaging.image.Image so opening an image will first load it’s metadata (width, height) before loading all the pixel data (which can consume large amounts of memory). This is useful for users who just want to verify that what they have is an image supported by pymaging and maybe want to know the dimensions of the image before loading it.

pymaging.image.LoadedImage should only be used if you have all the pixel data in memory anyway or if there’s no way around loading all the data at first, as it’s required to extract the meta information.

About loaders

pymaging.image.Image takes a loader callable which will be called to actually load the image data. This loader should return a tuple (pixel_array, palette). pixel_array` should be constructed with :func:`pymaging.pixelarray.get_pixel_array`, whereas ``palette should either be a palette (list of colors) or None.

Pixel arrays

Pixel arrays are the core data structure in which image data is represented in pymaging. Their base class is pymaging.pixelarray.GenericPixelArray, but in practice they use one of the specialized subclasses. In almost all cases, you should use pymaging.pixelarray.get_pixel_array() to construct pixel arrays, instead of using the classes directly.

pymaging.pixelarray.get_pixel_array() takes the image data (as an array.array, more on this later), the width (in pixels), height (in pixels) and the pixel size as arguments and returns a, if possible specialized, pixel array.

Pixel size

The pixel size indicates how many bytes form a single pixel. It also describes how data is stored in the array passed into the pixel array. A pixel size of one indicates either an image with a palette (where the bytes in the image data are indices into the palette) or a monochrome image. Pixel size 3 is probably the most common and usually indicates RGB, whereas pixel size 4 indicates RGBA.

Given the pixel size, the data passed into the pixel array is translated into pixels at x/y coordinates through the APIs on pixel array.

Important methods

You should hardly ever manipulate the data attribute on pixel arrays directly, instead, you should use the provided APIs that handle things like x/y translation for the given width, height and pixel size.

Pixel array methods usually operate in place, if you wish to have a copy of the data, use copy().

get(x, y)

Returns the pixel (a list of ints) at the given position.

set(x, y, pixel)

Sets the given pixel (list of ints) to the given position.

remove_lines, remove_columns, add_lines and add_columns

Those four methods are closely related and are used to resize a pixel array (and thus the image canvas). They all take two arguments: amount and offset.

Warning

There is an important performance caveat with those four methods. Manipulating columns (add_columns and remove_columns) is slower the more lines there are. Therefore the column manipulating methods should always be called before add_lines or after remove_lines to keep the amount of lines where columns are changed the lowest.