Most CV applications need to get images as input. Most also produce images as output. An interactive CV application might require a camera as an input source and a window as an output destination. However, other possible sources and destinations include image files, video files, and raw bytes. For example, raw bytes might be transmitted via a network connection, or they might be generated by an algorithm if we incorporate procedural graphics into our application. Let's look at each of these possibilities.
OpenCV provides the imread() and imwrite() functions that support various file formats for still images. The supported formats vary by system but should always include the BMP format. Typically, PNG, JPEG, and TIFF should be among the supported formats too.
Let's explore the anatomy of the representation of an image in Python and NumPy.
No matter the format, each pixel has a value, but the difference is in how the pixel is represented. For example...