Currently I'm using a pixel reader via AutoItv3 to perform some actions in a program that is running direct X; A game. Right now the program works fine but as an exercise I've been rewriting it in python. Right now I can do:
import ImageGrab # Part of PIL
image = ImageGrab.grab() #Define an area to capture.
rgb = image.getpixel((1, 90)) #What pixel do we want?
And that grabs the pixel info I want just fine, but I'm doing this quite rapidly (needs to be done 3x a second or faster), but the result is that it majorly affects the framerate of this DirectX-based game.
Is there a faster way in Python to read a specific screen pixel? Even limiting this one to running every 0.3 seconds is causing more strain than it really should (I actually figured python would be faster than AutoIt for this particular purpose, hence the reason I'm trying it)
This is the PIL's grabscreen source, Its does not accept any parameters, and Its grab the whole screen and convert it to bitmap.
PyImaging_GrabScreenWin32(PyObject* self, PyObject* args)
{
int width, height;
HBITMAP bitmap;
BITMAPCOREHEADER core;
HDC screen, screen_copy;
PyObject* buffer;
/* step 1: create a memory DC large enough to hold the
entire screen */
screen = CreateDC(";DISPLAY", NULL, NULL, NULL);
screen_copy = CreateCompatibleDC(screen);
width = GetDeviceCaps(screen, HORZRES);
height = GetDeviceCaps(screen, VERTRES);
bitmap = CreateCompatibleBitmap(screen, width, height);
if (!bitmap)
goto error;
if (!SelectObject(screen_copy, bitmap))
goto error;
/* step 2: copy bits into memory DC bitmap */
if (!BitBlt(screen_copy, 0, 0, width, height, screen, 0, 0, SRCCOPY))
goto error;
/* step 3: extract bits from bitmap */
buffer = PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, height * ((width*3 + 3) & -4));
if (!buffer)
return NULL;
core.bcSize = sizeof(core);
core.bcWidth = width;
core.bcHeight = height;
core.bcPlanes = 1;
core.bcBitCount = 24;
if (!GetDIBits(screen_copy, bitmap, 0, height, PyString_AS_STRING(buffer),
(BITMAPINFO*) &core, DIB_RGB_COLORS))
goto error;
DeleteObject(bitmap);
DeleteDC(screen_copy);
DeleteDC(screen);
return Py_BuildValue("(ii)N", width, height, buffer);
error:
PyErr_SetString(PyExc_IOError, "screen grab failed");
DeleteDC(screen_copy);
DeleteDC(screen);
return NULL;
}
So, when I just go a little deep, found C approach is good
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd144909(VS.85).aspx
And Python has ctypes, so here is my approach using ctypes (in Windows 10, winnt
has been replaced with Windows
):
>>> from ctypes import *
>>> user= windll.LoadLibrary("c:\\winnt\\system32\\user32.dll") #I am in windows 2000, may be yours will be windows
>>> h = user.GetDC(0)
>>> gdi= windll.LoadLibrary("c:\\winnt\\system32\\gdi32.dll")
>>> gdi.GetPixel(h,1023,767)
16777215 #I believe its white color of RGB or BGR value, #FFFFFF (according to msdn it should be RGB)
>>> gdi.GetPixel(h,1024,767)
-1 #because my screen is only 1024x768
You could write a wrapper for function GetPixel like this
from ctypes import windll
dc= windll.user32.GetDC(0)
def getpixel(x,y):
return windll.gdi32.GetPixel(dc,x,y)
Then you can use like getpixel(0,0)
, getpixel(100,0)
, etc...
PS: Mine is Windows 2000, so I put winnt
in the path, you may need to change it to windows
or you chould completely remove path, just using user32.dll
and gdi32.dll
should work too.
Comment on S.Mark's solution: user32 library is already loaded by windll into windll.user32, so instead of the dc = ... line you can do:
def getpixel(x,y):
return gdi.GetPixel(windll.user32.GetDC(0),x,y)
...or preferably:
dc= windll.user32.GetDC(0)
You might be able to do it via SDL (?). Based on this question, SDL can access the screen. And it has python bindings.
Might be worth a shot? If it worked it would certainly be faster than doing a full screen capture in PIL.
It's an old question, but it ranks quite highly on Google when searching for Python screen grab methods, so I think it might be useful to mention that the ImageGrab module now supports grabbing a region of the screen:
PIL.ImageGrab.grab(bbox=None)
Parameters: bbox – What region to copy. Default is the entire screen.
Returns: An image
http://pillow.readthedocs.io/en/3.1.x/reference/ImageGrab.html
Expanding the scope slightly, there is now also a replacement for ImageGrab called pyscreenshot, that also saves some part of the screen to a or PIL/Pillow image. This module also works on Linux, unlike ImageGrab which is Windows and OS X only.
import pyscreenshot as ImageGrab
im=ImageGrab.grab(bbox=(10,10,510,510)) # X1,Y1,X2,Y2
im.show()
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyscreenshot