Image to Binary

Contents of Readme

1. About
2. Usage
3. Input image
4. Raw File
5. Dependencies

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About

Simple script to convert images to BMP files or raw RGB binary file.

Usage

Script should be called with arguments. First options should be given, if wanted, than the name of the files. Available options can be found at the table below.

Option	Short version	Description	Default
--alpha	-a	Include alpha channel in raw file	No
--bmp	-b	Set output to .bmp	No
--help	-h	Print usage information	n/a
--no-alpha	-n	Do not include alpha channel in raw file	Yes
--raw	-r	Set output to .raw	Yes
--format [x]	-f [x]	Manipulates the output image data	No

Table of available formats for --format (-f) option:

Name	Description	Usage information
bw	Black & white output image	Uses input raw/bmp and alpha configuration
greyscale	Greyscale output image	Uses input raw/bmp and alpha configuration
rgb565	RGB565 formatted output image	Output is raw data without alpha channel

Input Image

This tool should work with any image file that PIL module can open. While doing any of the "formatting" with --format or writing a .raw file; it uses .bmp files with 8-bit colors, with or without alpha channel.

Raw file

Raw files contains binary data values for images, without any header or footer. With --no-alpha option, first three bytes holds the RGB values for first pixel. Following three bytes hold the values for next pixel and so on. With --alpha option, alpha value is included after last color value, and each pixel represented with four bytes. RGB values are stored in little byte order, same as BMP file.

RGB565 format

In standard raw file, each color represented with 8 bits. In RGB565 format; red and blue are represented with 5 bits each, while green is represented with 6 bits. To fit existing 24 bit color data to 16 bits, corresponding color bits are shifted. RGB565 values are stored in big byte order.

Dependencies

Script image-to-binary.py uses sys, os and PIL modules, and tested with Python 3.8.6 on Pop!_OS 20.10