I am trying to teach myself C# and have heard from a variety of sources that the functions get and setpixel can be horribly slow. What are some of the alternatives and is the performance improvement really that significant? Thanks in advance!
A chunk of my code for reference:
public static Bitmap Paint(Bitmap _b, Color f)
{
Bitmap b = new Bitmap(_b);
for (int x = 0; x < b.Width; x++)
{
for (int y = 0; y < b.Height; y++)
{
Color c = b.GetPixel(x, y);
b.SetPixel(x, y, Color.FromArgb(c.A, f.R, f.G, f.B));
}
}
return b;
}
public class DirectBitmap : IDisposable
{
public Bitmap Bitmap { get; private set; }
public Int32[] Bits { get; private set; }
public bool Disposed { get; private set; }
public int Height { get; private set; }
public int Width { get; private set; }
protected GCHandle BitsHandle { get; private set; }
public DirectBitmap(int width, int height)
{
Width = width;
Height = height;
Bits = new Int32[width * height];
BitsHandle = GCHandle.Alloc(Bits, GCHandleType.Pinned);
Bitmap = new Bitmap(width, height, width * 4, PixelFormat.Format32bppPArgb, BitsHandle.AddrOfPinnedObject());
}
public void SetPixel(int x, int y, Color colour)
{
int index = x + (y * Width);
int col = colour.ToArgb();
Bits[index] = col;
}
public Color GetPixel(int x, int y)
{
int index = x + (y * Width);
int col = Bits[index];
Color result = Color.FromArgb(col);
return result;
}
public void Dispose()
{
if (Disposed) return;
Disposed = true;
Bitmap.Dispose();
BitsHandle.Free();
}
}
There's no need for LockBits
or SetPixel
. Use the above class for direct access to bitmap data.
With this class, it is possible to set raw bitmap data as 32-bit data. Notice that it is PARGB, which is premultiplied alpha. See Alpha Compositing on Wikipedia for more information on how this works and examples on the MSDN article for BLENDFUNCTION to find out how to calculate the alpha properly.
If premultiplication might overcomplicate things, use PixelFormat.Format32bppArgb
instead. A performance hit occurs when it's drawn, because it's internally being converted to PixelFormat.Format32bppPArgb
. If the image doesn't have to change prior to being drawn, the work can be done before premultiplication, drawn to a PixelFormat.Format32bppArgb
buffer, and further used from there.
Access to standard Bitmap
members is exposed via the Bitmap
property. Bitmap data is directly accessed using the Bits
property.
byte
instead of int
for raw pixel dataChange both instances of Int32
to byte
, and then change this line:
Bits = new Int32[width * height];
To this:
Bits = new byte[width * height * 4];
When bytes are used, the format is Alpha/Red/Green/Blue in that order. Each pixel takes 4 bytes of data, one for each channel. The GetPixel and SetPixel functions will need to be reworked accordingly or removed.
IDisposable
just like Bitmap
.unsafe
block.Dispose
them when you're done so the memory can be unpinned.Graphics
objectBecause the Bitmap
property is actually a .NET Bitmap
object, it's straightforward to perform operations using the Graphics
class.
var dbm = new DirectBitmap(200, 200);
using (var g = Graphics.FromImage(dbm.Bitmap))
{
g.DrawRectangle(Pens.Black, new Rectangle(50, 50, 100, 100));
}
The question asks about performance, so here's a table that should show the relative performance between the three different methods proposed in the answers. This was done using a .NET Standard 2 based application and NUnit.
* Time to fill the entire bitmap with red pixels *
- Not including the time to create and dispose the bitmap
- Best out of 100 runs taken
- Lower is better
- Time is measured in Stopwatch ticks to emphasize magnitude rather than actual time elapsed
- Tests were performed on an Intel Core i7-4790 based workstation
Bitmap size
Method 4x4 16x16 64x64 256x256 1024x1024 4096x4096
DirectBitmap <1 2 28 668 8219 178639
LockBits 2 3 33 670 9612 197115
SetPixel 45 371 5920 97477 1563171 25811013
* Test details *
- LockBits test: Bitmap.LockBits is only called once and the benchmark
includes Bitmap.UnlockBits. It is expected that this
is the absolute best case, adding more lock/unlock calls
will increase the time required to complete the operation.