Quickly getting the color of some pixels on the screen in Python on Windows 7

Thanks to Margus' direction, I focused on getting the image before extracting the pixel information. Here's a workable solution using the Python Imaging Library (PIL), which requires Python 2.x.

import ImageGrab
import time
time.clock()
image = ImageGrab.grab()
for y in range(0, 100, 10):
    for x in range(0, 100, 10):
        color = image.getpixel((x, y))
print(time.clock())

I don't think it gets any simpler than that. This takes (on average) 0.1 seconds, which is a little slower than I'd like but fast enough.

As for having Python 3.x and 2.x both installed, I separated that into a new question. I'm still having some trouble with it, but it's generally working.


This is better than using getpixel all the time and works faster.

import ImageGrab

px = ImageGrab.grab().load()
for y in range(0, 100, 10):
    for x in range(0, 100, 10):
        color = px[x, y]

Reference: Image.load