Check If Image Is Colored Or Not

Question

I'm trying to figure out whether an image is colored or not. On this StackOverflow question, there's a reply that says that I should check the PixelFormat enum of the Image. Unfortunately, the reply isn't very clear to me. Is it safe to check whether the image.PixelFormat is different from PixelFormat.Format16bppGrayScale to consider that it is a colored image? What about the other values of the enumeration? The MSDN documentation isn't very clear...

Nephelometer

Would you like to check if it supports colors, or if it contains colors? It can be Format32bppArgb and still contain only black, white and gray. – Sp

@YoryeNathan: I want to know whether it contains colors. – Nephelometer

That's a different thing, then. Do you want it to work for every PixelFormat? – Sp

@YoryeNathan: I'm not really sure to be honest. The thing is that the user can upload an image to the site, then I need to check whether this image is colored or not. Accordingly, I need to do different things... – Nephelometer

The user uploads an image of any type, then? There's a file dialog box, etc? No extension filter? – Sp

There is a GetPixel method on Bitmap. msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/… you could then check the RGB values of every pixel but that kind of sucks. – Hluchy

@YoryeNathan: No, I will restrict it to jpg, png and gif images. – Nephelometer

@AndrewJones: Yeh well this is what I'm trying to avoid... – Nephelometer

Answer 1

You can improve this by avoiding Color.FromArgb, and iterating over bytes instead of ints, but I thought this would be more readable for you, and easier to understand as an approach.

The general idea is draw the image into a bitmap of known format (32bpp ARGB), and then check whether that bitmap contains any colors.

Locking the bitmap's bits allows you to iterate through it's color-data many times faster than using GetPixel, using unsafe code.

If a pixel's alpha is 0, then it is obviously GrayScale, because alpha 0 means it's completely opaque. Other than that - if R = G = B, then it is gray (and if they = 255, it is black).

private static unsafe bool IsGrayScale(Image image)
{
    using (var bmp = new Bitmap(image.Width, image.Height, PixelFormat.Format32bppArgb))
    {
        using (var g = Graphics.FromImage(bmp))
        {
            g.DrawImage(image, 0, 0);
        }

        var data = bmp.LockBits(new Rectangle(0, 0, bmp.Width, bmp.Height), ImageLockMode.ReadOnly, bmp.PixelFormat);

        var pt = (int*)data.Scan0;
        var res = true;

        for (var i = 0; i < data.Height * data.Width; i++)
        {
            var color = Color.FromArgb(pt[i]);

            if (color.A != 0 && (color.R != color.G || color.G != color.B))
            {
                res = false;
                break;
            }
        }

        bmp.UnlockBits(data);

        return res;
    }
}

Sp

Glad I helped. Just make sure I didn't confuse with the alpha (0 or 255). Other than that it should go smooth :) – Sp

Answer 2

    private bool isGrayScale(Bitmap processedBitmap)
    { 
        bool res = true;
        unsafe
        {
            System.Drawing.Imaging.BitmapData bitmapData = processedBitmap.LockBits(new Rectangle(0, 0, processedBitmap.Width, processedBitmap.Height), System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageLockMode.ReadWrite, processedBitmap.PixelFormat);
            int bytesPerPixel = System.Drawing.Bitmap.GetPixelFormatSize(processedBitmap.PixelFormat) / 8;
            int heightInPixels = bitmapData.Height;
            int widthInBytes = bitmapData.Width * bytesPerPixel;
            byte* PtrFirstPixel = (byte*)bitmapData.Scan0;
            Parallel.For(0, heightInPixels, y =>
            {
                byte* currentLine = PtrFirstPixel + (y * bitmapData.Stride);
                for (int x = 0; x < widthInBytes; x = x + bytesPerPixel)
                {
                    int b = currentLine[x];
                    int g = currentLine[x + 1];
                    int r = currentLine[x + 2];
                    if (b != g || r != g)
                    {
                        res = false;
                        break;
                    }
                }
            });
            processedBitmap.UnlockBits(bitmapData);
        }
        return res;
    }

Spoilfive

Please add some context to your answer and explain what the code does. stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-answer – Hough

Answer 3

SimpleVar's answer is mostly correct: that code doesn't properly handle when the source image has an indexed color format.

To solve this, simply replace the outer using block with:

using (var bmp = new Bitmap(image)) {

and remove the inner using entirely, as the Graphics object is no longer needed. This will create a perfect copy of the image in a non-indexed format, regardless of the original image's pixel format.

Isauraisbel