Fast Bitmap comparison - C#

Recently i have done bitmap comparison using Bitmap.GetPixel() method to check pixel by pixel using the following code snippet and it works functionality wise pretty well.

        private bool CompareBitmaps(Image left, Image right)
        {
            if (object.Equals(left, right))
                return true;
            if (left == null || right == null)
                return false;
            if (!left.Size.Equals(right.Size) || !left.PixelFormat.Equals(right.PixelFormat))
                return false;

            Bitmap leftBitmap = left as Bitmap;
            Bitmap rightBitmap = right as Bitmap;
            if (leftBitmap == null || rightBitmap == null)
                return true;

            #region Code taking more time for comparison

            for (int col = 0; col < left.Width; col++)
            {
                for (int row = 0; row < left.Height; row++)
                {
                    if (!leftBitmap.GetPixel(col, row).Equals(rightBitmap.GetPixel(col, row)))
                        return false;
               }
            }

            #endregion
            
            return true;
        }

But, here the problem is we are accessing memory directly using Bitmap.GetPixel() and it is taking lot of time for comparison. Finally performance of comparison is becoming very very slow for larger images. Say for 1.5MB size images it is taking around 2.5 sec which is not acceptable.


After spending lot of time, i am able to reduce this comparison time to almost 40 ms using Bitmap.LockBits() and Bitmap.UnlockBits() using the following code.

        private bool CompareBitmaps(Image left, Image right)
        {
            if (object.Equals(left, right))
                return true;
            if (left == null || right == null)
                return false;
            if (!left.Size.Equals(right.Size) || !left.PixelFormat.Equals(right.PixelFormat))
                return false;

            Bitmap leftBitmap = left as Bitmap;
            Bitmap rightBitmap = right as Bitmap;
            if (leftBitmap == null || rightBitmap == null)
                return true;

            #region Optimized code for performance

            int bytes = left.Width * left.Height * (Image.GetPixelFormatSize(left.PixelFormat) / 8);

            bool result = true;
            byte[] b1bytes = new byte[bytes];
            byte[] b2bytes = new byte[bytes];

            BitmapData bmd1 = leftBitmap.LockBits(new Rectangle(0, 0, leftBitmap.Width - 1, leftBitmap.Height - 1), ImageLockMode.ReadOnly, leftBitmap.PixelFormat);
            BitmapData bmd2 = rightBitmap.LockBits(new Rectangle(0, 0, rightBitmap.Width - 1, rightBitmap.Height - 1), ImageLockMode.ReadOnly, rightBitmap.PixelFormat);

            Marshal.Copy(bmd1.Scan0, b1bytes, 0, bytes);
            Marshal.Copy(bmd2.Scan0, b2bytes, 0, bytes);

            for (int n = 0; n <= bytes - 1; n++)
            {
                if (b1bytes[n] != b2bytes[n])
                {
                    result = false;
                    break;
                }
            }

            leftBitmap.UnlockBits(bmd1);
            rightBitmap.UnlockBits(bmd2);

            #endregion

            return result;
        }

That's all it is!

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