How can I know if a image is RGB in OpenCV?

Question

I've made a program in c++ using OpenCV library. The program record video from webcam and then split it in frames. I want to know if the frames are in RGB beacuse i want to access the RGB properties of every pixel. The codec for capture is CV_FOURCC('M','J','P','G'). How can i get the frames in RGB colorspace?

int main() {

Mat image;
VideoCapture cap(0);
cap.set(CV_CAP_PROP_FPS, 10);

if ( !cap.isOpened() ) {
    cout << "ERROR : Cannot open the video file"<<endl;
    return -1;
}
namedWindow("MyWindow", CV_WINDOW_AUTOSIZE);

double dWidth   = cap.get(CV_CAP_PROP_FRAME_WIDTH);
double dHeight = cap.get(CV_CAP_PROP_FRAME_HEIGHT);
cout << "Frame size :" << dWidth << "x" << dHeight << endl;
Size frameSize(static_cast<int>(dWidth), static_cast<int>(dHeight));
VideoWriter oVideoWriter("E:/myVideo.avi", CV_FOURCC('M', 'J', 'P', 'G'), 10, frameSize, true);

if (!oVideoWriter.isOpened()) {
    cout << "ERROR : Failed to write the video"<<endl;
    return - 1;
}

while (1) {
    Mat image;
    bool bSuccess = cap.read(image);

    if (!bSuccess) {
        cout << "ERROR : Cannot read a frame from video file" << endl;
        break;
    }
    oVideoWriter.write(image);
    imshow("MyWindow", image);

    if (waitKey(10) == 27) {

        saveImages();


            cout << "ESC key is pressed by user" << endl;
            break


    }
}
return 0;
}




int saveImages() {  



CvCapture *capture = cvCaptureFromFile("E:/myVideo.avi");
if(!capture) 
{
    cout<<"!!! cvCaptureFromAVI failed (file not found?)"<<endl;
    return -1; 
}

int fps = (int) cvGetCaptureProperty(capture, CV_CAP_PROP_FPS);


IplImage* frame = NULL;
int frame_number = 0;
char key = 0;   

while (key != 'q') 
{

    frame = cvQueryFrame(capture);       
    if (!frame) 
    {
        cout<<"!!! cvQueryFrame failed: no frame"<<endl;
        break;
    }       

    char filename[100];
    strcpy(filename, "frame_");

    char frame_id[30];
    _itoa(frame_number, frame_id, 10);
    strcat(filename, frame_id);
    strcat(filename, ".jpg");

    printf("* Saving: %s\n", filename);

    if (!cvSaveImage(filename, frame))
    {
        cout<<"!!! cvSaveImage failed"<<endl;
        break;
    }

    frame_number++;

    key = cvWaitKey(1000 / fps);
}


cvReleaseCapture(&capture);

return 0;
}

Answer 1

When OpenCV loads colored images (i.e. 3 channel) from the disk, camera, or a video file, the image data will be stored in the BGR format. This is a simple test that you can do:

/* Code using the C++ API */

cv::VideoCapture cap(0);
if (!cap.isOpened()) {
    std::cout << "!!! Failed to open webcam" << std::endl;
    return -1;
}

if (!cap.read(frame)) {
    std::cout << "!!! Failed to read a frame from the camera" << std::endl;
    return -1;
}

bool is_colored = false;
if (frame.channels() == 3) {
    is_colored = true;
}

// Do something with is_colored
// ...

Unless you have a weird camera, the frames will always be colored (and as result, stored as BGR).

When cv::imwrite() (C++ API) or cvSaveImage() (C API) are called, OpenCV does the proper magic tricks to ensure the data is saved in a compatible way with requested output format (JPG, PNG, AVI, etc) and during this process it automatically converts the data to RGB if it needs to.

Nevertheless, if for some reason you need to convert the image to RGB you can call:

cv::Mat img_rgb;
cv::cvtColor(frame, img_rgb, CV_BGR2RGB);  

Please note that OpenCV has a C API and also a C++ API, and they shouldn't be mixed:

• If you use IplImage then stick with the rest of the C API.

• If you decide to go with cv::Mat, then keep using the C++ API.

There are different ways to access the pixels of a cv::Mat, here is one of them:

unsigned char* pixels = (unsigned char*)(frame.data);
for (int i = 0; i < frame.rows; i++)
{
    for (int j = 0; j < frame.cols; j++)
    {
        char b = pixels[frame.step * j + i] ;
        char g = pixels[frame.step * j + i + 1];
        char r = pixels[frame.step * j + i + 2];
    }
}