PitonX60 / python-rle

Convert a PNG file into a human-readable RLE format by using Python 3 and Pillow

python-rle

Convert a PNG file into a human-readable RLE format by using Python 3 and Pillow.

If you don't have Pillow installed

Run the following command from the command prompt:

pip install pillow

What is RLE

According to Wikipedia, RLE stands for "Run-length encoding (RLE)".

Run-length encoding is a very simple form of lossless data compression in which runs of data (that is, sequences in which the same data value occurs in many consecutive data elements) are stored as a single data value and count, rather than as the original run.

For example, this string:
WWWWWWWWWWWWBWWWWWWWWWWWWBBBWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWBWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

...becomes this after using RLE:
12W1B12W3B24W1B14W

This script simply converts a binary PNG image into an RLE-type file format.

Example

Original image

Sample output

#Image Dimensions
Width: 683 
Height: 384 
#Image Palette
255, 0, 128
0, 102, 0
0, 255, 0
66, 255, 66
0, 0, 255
255, 255, 0
128, 128, 128
0, 0, 0
#Pixel Count
0: 42670
1: 48
0: 631
1: 53
0: 627
1: 61
0: 55
2: 55
0: 509
1: 67
0: 48
2: 63
... truncated for brevity

Included commands

open_png(filename): Open up a PNG file by file path, and read it into memory
get_color_atpoint(point): Get a tuple with RGB values at a given point in an image, by passing in a tuple with X,Y coordinates
read_rle_fromstream(stream): Read in RLE information from a file, by passing in a file stream
write_memory_tofile(filename): Write out the image in memory as a binary file
write_rle_tostream(filename): Write out RLE information to a file, by passing in a file stream