A single channel of image data, either a color channel of a Surface or a grayscale image. Implicitly shared object.
A Channel can be thought of as a grayscale image, and frequently is simply that. Its name comes from the most common use case, which is to represent a single color channel of an image, such as the red, green, blue or alpha channel of a Surface. To acquire one of these color channels from a Surface, use getChannelRed(), getChannelBlue(), getChannelGreen() or getChannelAlpha().
Channel rChan = surf.getChannelRed(); // references just the red values of surf's pixelsThe code below constructs a Channel which is a grayscale image independent of a Surface that is 640x480 pixels:
Channel chan( 640, 480 );You can also construct a Channel using an ImageSource, such as the result of loadImage(). In the code below, \a myImage will hold a grayscale version of the PNG file stored at the relative path "myImage.png":
Channel myImage = loadImage( "myImage.png" );Channels come in two primary configurations, the traditional 8-bits unsigned integer represented by Channel8u, and a 32-bit float version suitable for high dynamic range images, represented by Channel32f. Channel is a short-hand synonym for Channel8u.