Pygame - Loading Image

The pygame.image module contains functions for loading and saving images from file or file like object. An image is loaded as a Surface object which eventually is rendered on Pygame display window.

First we obtain a Surface object by load() function.

img = pygame.image.load('pygame.png')

Next we obtain a rect object out of this Surface and then use Surface.blit() function to render the image −

rect = img.get_rect()
rect.center = 200, 150
screen.blit(img, rect)

Example

The complete program for displaying Pygame logo on the display window is as follows −

import pygame

pygame.init()
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((400, 300))
img = pygame.image.load('pygame.png')
done = False
bg = (127,127,127)
while not done:
   for event in pygame.event.get():
      screen.fill(bg)
      rect = img.get_rect()
      rect.center = 200, 150
      screen.blit(img, rect)
      if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
      done = True
   pygame.display.update()

Output

The output for the above code is as follows −

The blit() function can take an optional special-flags parameter with one of the following values −

BLEND_RGBA_ADD
BLEND_RGBA_SUB
BLEND_RGBA_MULT
BLEND_RGBA_MIN
BLEND_RGBA_MAX
BLEND_RGB_ADD
BLEND_RGB_SUB
BLEND_RGB_MULT
BLEND_RGB_MIN
BLEND_RGB_MAX

The pygame.Surface module also has a convert() function which optimizes the image format and makes drawing faster.

The pygame.image module has a save() function that saves contents of Surface object to an image file. Pygame supports the following image formats −

Example

Following program draws three circles on the display surface and save it as a circles.png file using image.save() function.

import pygame

pygame.init()
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((400, 300))
done = False
white=(255,255,255)
red = (255,0,0)
green = (0,255,0)
blue = (0,0,255)

bg = (127,127,127)
while not done:
   for event in pygame.event.get():
      screen.fill(bg)
      if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
         done = True
      pygame.draw.circle(screen, red, (200,150), 60,2)
      pygame.draw.circle(screen, green, (200,150), 80,2)
      pygame.draw.circle(screen, blue, (200,150), 100,2)
   pygame.display.update()
   pygame.image.save(screen, "circles.png")

Output

The circles.png should be created in the current working folder.