OpenCV get pixel channel value from Mat image

Question

Maybe I'm not looking hard enough, but everything seems to want me to use an array. Thus, how do I get the channel value for a particular pixel for foo if foo is something like Mat foo = imread("bar.png")?

Answer 1

Assuming the type is CV_8UC3 you would do this:

for(int i = 0; i < foo.rows; i++)
{
    for(int j = 0; j < foo.cols; j++)
    {
        Vec3b bgrPixel = foo.at<Vec3b>(i, j);

        // do something with BGR values...
    }
}

Here is the documentation for Vec3b. Hope that helps! Also, don't forget OpenCV stores things internally as BGR not RGB.

EDIT :
For performance reasons, you may want to use direct access to the data buffer in order to process the pixel values:

Here is how you might go about this:

uint8_t* pixelPtr = (uint8_t*)foo.data;
int cn = foo.channels();
Scalar_<uint8_t> bgrPixel;

for(int i = 0; i < foo.rows; i++)
{
    for(int j = 0; j < foo.cols; j++)
    {
        bgrPixel.val[0] = pixelPtr[i*foo.cols*cn + j*cn + 0]; // B
        bgrPixel.val[1] = pixelPtr[i*foo.cols*cn + j*cn + 1]; // G
        bgrPixel.val[2] = pixelPtr[i*foo.cols*cn + j*cn + 2]; // R

        // do something with BGR values...
    }
}

Or alternatively:

int cn = foo.channels();
Scalar_<uint8_t> bgrPixel;

for(int i = 0; i < foo.rows; i++)
{
    uint8_t* rowPtr = foo.row(i);
    for(int j = 0; j < foo.cols; j++)
    {
        bgrPixel.val[0] = rowPtr[j*cn + 0]; // B
        bgrPixel.val[1] = rowPtr[j*cn + 1]; // G
        bgrPixel.val[2] = rowPtr[j*cn + 2]; // R

        // do something with BGR values...
    }
}