Question

Given a .png image with a transparent background, I want to find the bounding box of the non-transparent data. Using nested for loops with QImage.pixel() is painfully slow. Is there a built-in method of doing this in Qt?

Answer 1

If pixel() is too slow for you, consider more efficient row-wise data adressing, given a QImage p:

int l =p.width(), r = 0, t = p.height(), b = 0;
for (int y = 0; y < p.height(); ++y) {
    QRgb *row = (QRgb*)p.scanLine(y);
    bool rowFilled = false;
    for (int x = 0; x < p.width(); ++x) {
        if (qAlpha(row[x])) {
            rowFilled = true;
            r = std::max(r, x);
            if (l > x) {
                l = x;
                x = r; // shortcut to only search for new right bound from here
            }
        }
    }
    if (rowFilled) {
        t = std::min(t, y);
        b = y;
    }
}

I doubt it will get any faster than this.