What is the fastest way to draw an image from discrete pixel values in Python?

Question

I wish to draw an image based on computed pixel values, as a means to visualize some data. Essentially, I wish to take a 2-dimensional matrix of color triplets and render it

Answer 1

A different approach is to use Pyxel, an open source implementation of the TIC-80 API in Python3 (TIC-80 is the open source PICO-8).

Here's a complete app that just draws one yellow pixel on a black background:

import pyxel

def update():

    """This function just maps the Q key to `pyxel.quit`,
    which works just like `sys.exit`."""

    if pyxel.btnp(pyxel.KEY_Q): pyxel.quit()

def draw():

    """This function clears the screen and draws a single
    pixel, whenever the buffer needs updating. Note that
    colors are specified as palette indexes (0-15)."""

    pyxel.cls(0)            # clear screen (color)
    pyxel.pix(10, 10, 10)   # blit a pixel (x, y, color)

pyxel.init(160, 120)        # initilize gui (width, height)
pyxel.run(update, draw)     # run the game  (*callbacks)

Note: The library only allows for up to sixteen colors, but you can change which colors, and you could probably get it to support more without too much work.