pygame.pixelcopy

The pygame.pixelcopy module contains functions for copying between surfaces and objects exporting an array structure interface. It is a backend for pygame.surfarray, adding NumPy support. But pixelcopy is more general, and intended for direct use.

The array struct interface exposes an array's data in a standard way. It was introduced in NumPy. In Python 2.7 and above it is replaced by the new buffer protocol, though the buffer protocol is still a work in progress. The array struct interface, on the other hand, is stable and works with earlier Python versions. So for now the array struct interface is the predominate way pygame handles array introspection.

New in pygame 1.9.2.

pygame.pixelcopy.surface_to_array()

copy surface pixels to an array object

surface_to_array(array, surface, kind='P', opaque=255, clear=0) -> None

The surface_to_array function copies pixels from a Surface object to a 2D or 3D array. Depending on argument kind and the target array dimension, a copy may be raw pixel value, RGB, a color component slice, or colorkey alpha transparency value. Recognized kind values are the single character codes 'P', 'R', 'G', 'B', 'A', and 'C'. Kind codes are case insensitive, so 'p' is equivalent to 'P'. The first two dimensions of the target must be the surface size (w, h).

The default 'P' kind code does a direct raw integer pixel (mapped) value copy to a 2D array and a 'RGB' pixel component (unmapped) copy to a 3D array having shape (w, h, 3). For an 8 bit colormap surface this means the table index is copied to a 2D array, not the table value itself. A 2D array's item size must be at least as large as the surface's pixel byte size. The item size of a 3D array must be at least one byte.

For the 'R', 'G', 'B', and 'A' copy kinds a single color component of the unmapped surface pixels are copied to the target 2D array. For kind 'A' and surfaces with source alpha (the surface was created with the SRCALPHA flag), has a colorkey (set with Surface.set_colorkey()), or has a blanket alpha (set with Surface.set_alpha()) then the alpha values are those expected for a SDL surface. If a surface has no explicit alpha value, then the target array is filled with the value of the optional opaque surface_to_array argument (default 255: not transparent).

Copy kind 'C' is a special case for alpha copy of a source surface with colorkey. Unlike the 'A' color component copy, the clear argument value is used for colorkey matches, opaque otherwise. By default, a match has alpha 0 (totally transparent), while everything else is alpha 255 (totally opaque). It is a more general implementation of pygame.surfarray.array_colorkey().

Specific to surface_to_array, a ValueError is raised for target arrays with incorrect shape or item size. A TypeError is raised for an incorrect kind code. Surface specific problems, such as locking, raise a pygame.error.

pygame.pixelcopy.array_to_surface()

copy an array object to a surface

array_to_surface(<surface>, <array>) -> None

See pygame.surfarray.blit_array().

pygame.pixelcopy.map_array()

copy an array to another array, using surface format

map_array(<array>, <array>, <surface>) -> None

Map an array of color element values - (w, h, ..., 3) - to an array of pixels - (w, h) according to the format of <surface>.

pygame.pixelcopy.make_surface()

Copy an array to a new surface

pygame.pixelcopy.make_surface(array) -> Surface

Create a new Surface that best resembles the data and format of the array. The array can be 2D or 3D with any sized integer values.