How to save Raspberry Pi raw 10-bit image as 16-bit PNG using pypng

In our previous post How to capture RaspberryPi camera 10-bit raw image in Python we showed how you can use the picamera Python library to capture raw 10-bit image data.

The PNG image format supports storing 16-bit image data. This post shows you how to do that using the NumPy arrays we generated in our previous post. We are using the pypng library.

with open('16bit.png', 'wb') as outfile:
    writer = png.Writer(width=rawimg.shape[1], height=rawimg.shape[0], bitdepth=16, greyscale=False)
    # rawimg is a (w, h, 3) RGB uint16 array
    # but PyPNG needs a (w, h*3) array
    png_data = np.reshape(rawimg, (-1, rawimg.shape[1]*3))
    # Scale 10 bit data to 16 bit values (else it will appear black)
    # NOTE: Depending on your photo and the settings,
    #  it might still appear quite dark!
    png_data *= int(2**6)
    writer.write(outfile, png_data)

Note that the resulting PNGs are ~9.9 Megabytes in size and saving them using pypng takes about 27 seconds to save the image on my Raspberry Pi 3!

For comparison, the raw NumPy data is ~29 Megabytes whereas the compressed NumPy data is 9.3 Megabytes,

Raw NumPy data (np.save): 29 Megabytes, takes 0.11 seconds to save.
Compressed NumPy data (np.savez_compressed): 9.3 Megabytes, take 12 seconds to save.

So if your motivation for using PNG is to save space, you might be better off using NumPy compressed data, especially if you need to save many camera frames in quick succession and hence are limited.

In case you need to use PNGs, you might want to check Pypy since pypng is a pure Python library and hence might benefit from Pypy’s increased execution speed. However, in practice, pypy3 is more than 10x slower. Please read our detailed analysis at Is pypng 16-bit PNG encoding faster using pypy on the Raspberry Pi?

Full example:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
import picamera
import picamera.array
import numpy as np
import png

# Capture image
print("Capturing image...")
with picamera.PiCamera() as camera:
    with picamera.array.PiBayerArray(camera) as stream:
        camera.capture(stream, 'jpeg', bayer=True)
        # Demosaic data and write to rawimg
        # (stream.array contains the non-demosaiced data)
        rawimg = stream.demosaic()

# Write to PNG
print("Writing 16-bit PNG...")
with open('16bit.png', 'wb') as outfile:
    writer = png.Writer(width=rawimg.shape[1], height=rawimg.shape[0], bitdepth=16, greyscale=False)
    # rawimg is a (w, h, 3) RGB uint16 array
    # but PyPNG needs a (w, h*3) array
    png_data = np.reshape(rawimg, (-1, rawimg.shape[1]*3))
    # Scale 10 bit data to 16 bit values (else it will appear black)
    # NOTE: Depending on your photo and the settings,
    #  it might still appear quite dark!
    png_data *= int(2**6)
    writer.write(outfile, png_data)