##### pygame documentation | Pygame Home || Help Contents || Reference Index Most useful stuff: Color | display | draw | event | font | image | key | locals | mixer | mouse | Rect | Surface | time | music | pygame Advanced stuff: cursors | joystick | mask | sprite | transform | BufferProxy | freetype | gfxdraw | midi | PixelArray | pixelcopy | sndarray | surfarray | math Other: camera | controller | examples | fastevent | scrap | tests | touch | version

`pygame.image`
  pygame module for image transfer

  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.).

  The image module is a required dependency of pygame, but it only optionally supports any extended file formats. By default it can only load uncompressed `BMP` images. When built with full image support, the `pygame.image.load()` function can support 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`

  New in pygame 2.0: Loading SVG, WebP, PNM

  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

  New in pygame 1.8: Saving PNG and JPEG files.

  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 `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 `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() -> None
    get_sdl_image_version() -> (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`.

    New in pygame 2.0.0.

  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 string buffer
    tostring(Surface, format, flipped=False) -> string

    Creates a string that can be transferred with the 'fromstring' method 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 string 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

    > - `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

  pygame.image.fromstring()
    create new Surface from a string buffer
    fromstring(string, 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 you can destroy the string buffer.

    The size and format image must compute the exact same size as the passed string buffer. Otherwise an exception will be raised.

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

  pygame.image.frombuffer()
    create a new Surface that shares data inside a bytes buffer
    frombuffer(bytes, size, format) -> Surface

    Create a new Surface that shares pixel data directly from a bytes buffer. 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()`create new Surface from a string buffer, 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

  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.

    From version 2.0.1, this function is always available, but raises an error 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.

    Changed in pygame 2.0.1.

  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.

    Incase 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` incase the namehint was not specified while saving to file-like object.

    Changed in pygame 2.0.1: This function is always available, but raises an error 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.

Edit on GitHub