Output image

Question

I need to output an image using C++. Do you know a library that can do it? I would start from it to learn how to develop a game

Answer 1

You can easily get away without using an external imaging library by outputting a very simple format such as PGM or PBM. Refer to the wikipedia page on Netbpm for more details, but you're essentially outputting all the values as either ASCII or binary numbers, then any image viewer or editor that supports PGM (many of which do) can open and display them. Even if you don't have an editor, something like ImageMagick can easily convert it to a PNG or any other more accessible format.

I've used this technique in the past to quickly visualize 2D data, as you're intending to.

https://www.quora.com/In-C-and-C++-how-can-I-open-an-image-file-like-JPEG-and-read-it-as-a-matrix-of-pixels

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19813443/quick-way-to-output-a-picture-in-c

Answer 2

Thanks too much