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The image module contains functions for loading and saving pictures, as well as transferring Surfaces to formats usable by other packages.

Note that there is no Image class; an image is loaded as a Surface object. The Surface class allows manipulation (drawing lines, setting pixels, capturing regions, etc.).

In the vast majority of installations, pygame is built to support extended formats, using the SDL_Image library behind the scenes. However, some installations may only support uncompressed BMP images. With full image support, the pygame.image.load() function can load the following formats.

• BMP

• GIF (non-animated)

• JPEG

• LBM (and PBM, PGM, PPM)

• PCX

• PNG

• PNM

• SVG (limited support, using Nano SVG)

• TGA (uncompressed)

• TIFF

• WEBP

• XPM

Saving images only supports a limited set of formats. You can save to the following formats.

• BMP

• JPEG

• PNG

• TGA

JPEG and JPG, as well as TIF and TIFF refer to the same file format

pygame.image.load()

load new image from a file (or file-like object)

load(filename) -> Surface

load(fileobj, namehint="") -> Surface

Load an image from a file source. You can pass either a filename, a Python file-like object, or a pathlib.Path.

Pygame will automatically determine the image type (e.g., GIF or bitmap) and create a new Surface object from the data. In some cases it will need to know the file extension (e.g., GIF images should end in ".gif"). If you pass a raw file-like object, you may also want to pass the original filename as the namehint argument.

The returned Surface will contain the same color format, colorkey and alpha transparency as the file it came from. You will often want to call pygame.Surface.convert() with no arguments, to create a copy that will draw more quickly on the screen.

For alpha transparency, like in .png images, use the pygame.Surface.convert_alpha() method after loading so that the image has per pixel transparency.

Pygame may not always be built to support all image formats. At minimum it will support uncompressed BMP. If pygame.image.get_extended() returns True, you should be able to load most images (including PNG, JPG and GIF).

You should use os.path.join() for compatibility.

eg. asurf = pygame.image.load(os.path.join('data', 'bla.png'))

pygame.image.save()

save an image to file (or file-like object)

save(Surface, filename) -> None

save(Surface, fileobj, namehint="") -> None

This will save your Surface as either a BMP, TGA, PNG, or JPEG image. If the filename extension is unrecognized it will default to TGA. Both TGA, and BMP file formats create uncompressed files. You can pass a filename, a pathlib.Path or a Python file-like object. For file-like object, the image is saved to TGA format unless a namehint with a recognizable extension is passed in.

Note

When saving to a file-like object, it seems that for most formats, the object needs to be flushed after saving to it to make loading from it possible.

Changed in pygame 1.8: Saving PNG and JPEG files.

Changed in pygame 2.0.0: The namehint parameter was added to make it possible to save other formats than TGA to a file-like object. Saving to a file-like object with JPEG is possible.

pygame.image.get_sdl_image_version()

get version number of the SDL_Image library being used

get_sdl_image_version(linked=True) -> None

get_sdl_image_version(linked=True) -> (major, minor, patch)

If pygame is built with extended image formats, then this function will return the SDL_Image library's version number as a tuple of 3 integers (major, minor, patch). If not, then it will return None.

linked=True is the default behavior and the function will return the version of the library that Pygame is linked against, while linked=False will return the version of the library that Pygame is compiled against.

New in pygame 2.0.0.

Changed in pygame 2.2.0: linked keyword argument added and default behavior changed from returning compiled version to returning linked version

pygame.image.get_extended()

test if extended image formats can be loaded

get_extended() -> bool

If pygame is built with extended image formats this function will return True. It is still not possible to determine which formats will be available, but generally you will be able to load them all.

pygame.image.tostring()

transfer image to byte buffer

tostring(Surface, format, flipped=False) -> bytes

Creates a string of bytes that can be transferred with the fromstring or frombytes methods in other Python imaging packages. Some Python image packages prefer their images in bottom-to-top format (PyOpenGL for example). If you pass True for the flipped argument, the byte buffer will be vertically flipped.

The format argument is a string of one of the following values. Note that only 8-bit Surfaces can use the "P" format. The other formats will work for any Surface. Also note that other Python image packages support more formats than pygame.

• P, 8-bit palettized Surfaces

• RGB, 24-bit image

• RGBX, 32-bit image with unused space

• RGBA, 32-bit image with an alpha channel

• ARGB, 32-bit image with alpha channel first

• BGRA, 32-bit image with alpha channel, red and blue channels swapped

• RGBA_PREMULT, 32-bit image with colors scaled by alpha channel

• ARGB_PREMULT, 32-bit image with colors scaled by alpha channel, alpha channel first

Note

it is preferred to use tobytes() as of pygame 2.1.3

New in pygame 2.1.3: BGRA format

pygame.image.tobytes()

transfer image to byte buffer

tobytes(Surface, format, flipped=False) -> bytes

Creates a string of bytes that can be transferred with the fromstring or frombytes methods in other Python imaging packages. Some Python image packages prefer their images in bottom-to-top format (PyOpenGL for example). If you pass True for the flipped argument, the byte buffer will be vertically flipped.

The format argument is a string of one of the following values. Note that only 8-bit Surfaces can use the "P" format. The other formats will work for any Surface. Also note that other Python image packages support more formats than pygame.

• P, 8-bit palettized Surfaces

• RGB, 24-bit image

• RGBX, 32-bit image with unused space

• RGBA, 32-bit image with an alpha channel

• ARGB, 32-bit image with alpha channel first

• BGRA, 32-bit image with alpha channel, red and blue channels swapped

• RGBA_PREMULT, 32-bit image with colors scaled by alpha channel

• ARGB_PREMULT, 32-bit image with colors scaled by alpha channel, alpha channel first

Note

this function is an alias for tostring(). The use of this function is recommended over tostring() as of pygame 2.1.3. This function was introduced so it matches nicely with other libraries (PIL, numpy, etc), and with people's expectations.

New in pygame 2.1.3.

pygame.image.fromstring()

create new Surface from a byte buffer

fromstring(bytes, size, format, flipped=False) -> Surface

This function takes arguments similar to pygame.image.tostring(). The size argument is a pair of numbers representing the width and height. Once the new Surface is created it is independent from the memory of the bytes passed in.

The bytes and format passed must compute to the exact size of image specified. Otherwise a ValueError will be raised.

See the pygame.image.frombuffer() method for a potentially faster way to transfer images into pygame.

Note

it is preferred to use frombytes() as of pygame 2.1.3

pygame.image.frombytes()

create new Surface from a byte buffer

frombytes(bytes, size, format, flipped=False) -> Surface

This function takes arguments similar to pygame.image.tobytes(). The size argument is a pair of numbers representing the width and height. Once the new Surface is created it is independent from the memory of the bytes passed in.

The bytes and format passed must compute to the exact size of image specified. Otherwise a ValueError will be raised.

See the pygame.image.frombuffer() method for a potentially faster way to transfer images into pygame.

Note

this function is an alias for fromstring(). The use of this function is recommended over fromstring() as of pygame 2.1.3. This function was introduced so it matches nicely with other libraries (PIL, numpy, etc), and with people's expectations.

New in pygame 2.1.3.

pygame.image.frombuffer()

create a new Surface that shares data inside a bytes buffer

frombuffer(buffer, size, format) -> Surface

Create a new Surface that shares pixel data directly from a buffer. This buffer can be bytes, a bytearray, a memoryview, a pygame.BufferProxy, or any object that supports the buffer protocol. This method takes similar arguments to pygame.image.fromstring(), but is unable to vertically flip the source data.

This will run much faster than pygame.image.fromstring(), since no pixel data must be allocated and copied.

It accepts the following 'format' arguments:

• P, 8-bit palettized Surfaces

• RGB, 24-bit image

• BGR, 24-bit image, red and blue channels swapped.

• RGBX, 32-bit image with unused space

• RGBA, 32-bit image with an alpha channel

• ARGB, 32-bit image with alpha channel first

• BGRA, 32-bit image with alpha channel, red and blue channels swapped

New in pygame 2.1.3: BGRA format

pygame.image.load_basic()

load new BMP image from a file (or file-like object)

load_basic(file) -> Surface

Load an image from a file source. You can pass either a filename or a Python file-like object, or a pathlib.Path.

This function only supports loading "basic" image format, ie BMP format. This function is always available, no matter how pygame was built.

pygame.image.load_extended()

load an image from a file (or file-like object)

load_extended(filename) -> Surface

load_extended(fileobj, namehint="") -> Surface

This function is similar to pygame.image.load(), except that this function can only be used if pygame was built with extended image format support.

Changed in pygame 2.0.1: This function is always available, but raises an NotImplementedError if extended image formats are not supported. Previously, this function may or may not be available, depending on the state of extended image format support.

pygame.image.save_extended()

save a png/jpg image to file (or file-like object)

save_extended(Surface, filename) -> None

save_extended(Surface, fileobj, namehint="") -> None

This will save your Surface as either a PNG or JPEG image.

In case the image is being saved to a file-like object, this function uses the namehint argument to determine the format of the file being saved. Saves to JPEG in case the namehint was not specified while saving to a file-like object.

Changed in pygame 2.0.1: This function is always available, but raises an NotImplementedError if extended image formats are not supported. Previously, this function may or may not be available, depending on the state of extended image format support.