(This function is part of SDL_image, a separate library from SDL.)

IMG_LoadTexture

Load an image from a filesystem path into a GPU texture.

Header File

Syntax

SDL_Texture * IMG_LoadTexture(SDL_Renderer *renderer, const char *file);

Function Parameters

SDL_Renderer *	renderer	the SDL_Renderer to use to create the GPU texture.
const char *	file	a path on the filesystem to load an image from.

Return Value

(SDL_Texture *) Returns a new texture, or NULL on error.

Remarks

An SDL_Texture represents an image in GPU memory, usable by SDL's 2D Render API. This can be significantly more efficient than using a CPU-bound SDL_Surface if you don't need to manipulate the image directly after loading it.

If the loaded image has transparency or a colorkey, a texture with an alpha channel will be created. Otherwise, SDL_image will attempt to create an SDL_Texture in the most format that most reasonably represents the image data (but in many cases, this will just end up being 32-bit RGB or 32-bit RGBA).

There is a separate function to read files from an SDL_IOStream, if you need an i/o abstraction to provide data from anywhere instead of a simple filesystem read; that function is IMG_LoadTexture_IO().

If you would rather decode an image to an SDL_Surface (a buffer of pixels in CPU memory), call IMG_Load() instead.

When done with the returned texture, the app should dispose of it with a call to SDL_DestroyTexture().

Version

This function is available since SDL_image 3.0.0.