How to find out what type of a Mat object is with Mat::type() in OpenCV

Question

Here is a handy function you can use to help with identifying your opencv matrices at runtime. I find it useful for debugging, at least.

string type2str(int type) {
  string r;

  uchar depth = type & CV_MAT_DEPTH_MASK;
  uchar chans = 1 + (type >> CV_CN_SHIFT);

  switch ( depth ) {
    case CV_8U:  r = "8U"; break;
    case CV_8S:  r = "8S"; break;
    case CV_16U: r = "16U"; break;
    case CV_16S: r = "16S"; break;
    case CV_32S: r = "32S"; break;
    case CV_32F: r = "32F"; break;
    case CV_64F: r = "64F"; break;
    default:     r = "User"; break;
  }

  r += "C";
  r += (chans+'0');

  return r;
}

If M is a var of type Mat you can call it like so:

string ty =  type2str( M.type() );
printf("Matrix: %s %dx%d \n", ty.c_str(), M.cols, M.rows );

Will output data such as:

Matrix: 8UC3 640x480 
Matrix: 64FC1 3x2 

Its worth noting that there are also Matrix methods Mat::depth() and Mat::channels(). This function is just a handy way of getting a human readable interpretation from the combination of those two values whose bits are all stored in the same value.

For debugging purposes in case you want to look up a raw Mat::type in a debugger:

	C1	C2	C3	C4	C(5)	C(6)	C(7)	C(8)
CV_8U	0	8	16	24	32	40	48	56
CV_8S	1	9	17	25	33	41	49	57
CV_16U	2	10	18	26	34	42	50	58
CV_16S	3	11	19	27	35	43	51	59
CV_32S	4	12	20	28	36	44	52	60
CV_32F	5	13	21	29	37	45	53	61
CV_64F	6	14	22	30	38	46	54	62

So for example, if type = 30 then OpenCV data type is CV_64FC4. If type = 50 then the OpenCV data type is CV_16UC(7).

In OpenCV header "types_c.h" there are a set of defines which generate these, the format is CV_bits{U|S|F}C<number_of_channels>
So for example CV_8UC3 means 8 bit unsigned chars, 3 colour channels - each of these names map onto an arbitrary integer with the macros in that file.

Edit: See "types_c.h" for example:

#define CV_8UC3 CV_MAKETYPE(CV_8U,3)
#define CV_MAKETYPE(depth,cn) (CV_MAT_DEPTH(depth) + (((cn)-1) << CV_CN_SHIFT))

eg.
depth = CV_8U = 0
cn = 3
CV_CN_SHIFT = 3

CV_MAT_DEPTH(0) = 0
(((cn)-1) << CV_CN_SHIFT) = (3-1) << 3 = 2<<3 = 16

So CV_8UC3 = 16 but you aren't supposed to use this number, just check type() == CV_8UC3 if you need to know what type an internal OpenCV array is.
Remember OpenCV will convert the jpeg into BGR (or grey scale if you pass '0' to imread) - so it doesn't tell you anything about the original file.

I've added some usability to the function from the answer by @Octopus, for debugging purposes.

void MatType( Mat inputMat )
{
    int inttype = inputMat.type();

    string r, a;
    uchar depth = inttype & CV_MAT_DEPTH_MASK;
    uchar chans = 1 + (inttype >> CV_CN_SHIFT);
    switch ( depth ) {
        case CV_8U:  r = "8U";   a = "Mat.at<uchar>(y,x)"; break;  
        case CV_8S:  r = "8S";   a = "Mat.at<schar>(y,x)"; break;  
        case CV_16U: r = "16U";  a = "Mat.at<ushort>(y,x)"; break; 
        case CV_16S: r = "16S";  a = "Mat.at<short>(y,x)"; break; 
        case CV_32S: r = "32S";  a = "Mat.at<int>(y,x)"; break; 
        case CV_32F: r = "32F";  a = "Mat.at<float>(y,x)"; break; 
        case CV_64F: r = "64F";  a = "Mat.at<double>(y,x)"; break; 
        default:     r = "User"; a = "Mat.at<UKNOWN>(y,x)"; break; 
    }   
    r += "C";
    r += (chans+'0');
    cout << "Mat is of type " << r << " and should be accessed with " << a << endl;
    
}