Fast work with Bitmaps in C#

.net, bitmap, c#, graphics, pixel

Solution

You can do it a couple of different ways. You can use `unsafe` to get direct access to the data, or you can use marshaling to copy the data back and forth. The unsafe code is faster, but marshaling doesn't require unsafe code. Here's a performance comparison I did a while back.

Here's a complete sample using lockbits:

/*Note unsafe keyword*/
public unsafe Image ThresholdUA(float thresh)
{
    Bitmap b = new Bitmap(_image);//note this has several overloads, including a path to an image

    BitmapData bData = b.LockBits(new Rectangle(0, 0, _image.Width, _image.Height), ImageLockMode.ReadWrite, b.PixelFormat);

    byte bitsPerPixel = GetBitsPerPixel(bData.PixelFormat);

    /*This time we convert the IntPtr to a ptr*/
    byte* scan0 = (byte*)bData.Scan0.ToPointer();

    for (int i = 0; i < bData.Height; ++i)
    {
        for (int j = 0; j < bData.Width; ++j)
        {
            byte* data = scan0 + i * bData.Stride + j * bitsPerPixel / 8;

            //data is a pointer to the first byte of the 3-byte color data
            //data[0] = blueComponent;
            //data[1] = greenComponent;
            //data[2] = redComponent;
        }
    }

    b.UnlockBits(bData);

    return b;
}

Here's the same thing, but with marshaling:

/*No unsafe keyword!*/
public Image ThresholdMA(float thresh)
{
    Bitmap b = new Bitmap(_image);

    BitmapData bData = b.LockBits(new Rectangle(0, 0, _image.Width, _image.Height), ImageLockMode.ReadWrite, b.PixelFormat);

    /* GetBitsPerPixel just does a switch on the PixelFormat and returns the number */
    byte bitsPerPixel = GetBitsPerPixel(bData.PixelFormat);

    /*the size of the image in bytes */
    int size = bData.Stride * bData.Height;

    /*Allocate buffer for image*/
    byte[] data = new byte[size];

    /*This overload copies data of /size/ into /data/ from location specified (/Scan0/)*/
    System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.Copy(bData.Scan0, data, 0, size);

    for (int i = 0; i < size; i += bitsPerPixel / 8 )
    {
        double magnitude = 1/3d*(data[i] +data[i + 1] +data[i + 2]);

        //data[i] is the first of 3 bytes of color

    }

    /* This override copies the data back into the location specified */
    System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.Copy(data, 0, bData.Scan0, data.Length);

    b.UnlockBits(bData);

    return b;
}

Problem

I need to access each pixel of a Bitmap, work with them, then save them to a Bitmap. Using `Bitmap.GetPixel()` and `Bitmap.SetPixel()`, my program runs slowly. How can I quickly convert `Bitmap` to `byte[]` and back? I need a `byte[]` with `length = (4 * width * height)`, containing RGBA data of each pixel.

Original source