mpl.image.AxesImage.to_rgba

AxesImage.to_rgba(x, alpha=None, bytes=False)

Return a normalized rgba array corresponding to x.

In the normal case, x is a 1-D or 2-D sequence of scalars, and the corresponding ndarray of rgba values will be returned, based on the norm and colormap set for this ScalarMappable.

There is one special case, for handling images that are already rgb or rgba, such as might have been read from an image file. If x is an ndarray with 3 dimensions, and the last dimension is either 3 or 4, then it will be treated as an rgb or rgba array, and no mapping will be done. If the last dimension is 3, the alpha kwarg (defaulting to 1) will be used to fill in the transparency. If the last dimension is 4, the alpha kwarg is ignored; it does not replace the pre-existing alpha. A ValueError will be raised if the third dimension is other than 3 or 4.

In either case, if bytes is False (default), the rgba array will be floats in the 0-1 range; if it is True, the returned rgba array will be uint8 in the 0 to 255 range.

Note: this method assumes the input is well-behaved; it does not check for anomalies such as x being a masked rgba array, or being an integer type other than uint8, or being a floating point rgba array with values outside the 0-1 range.