gtk/docs/reference/gdk-pixbuf/tmpl/creating.sgml

<!-- ##### SECTION Title ##### -->
Image Data in Memory

<!-- ##### SECTION Short_Description ##### -->
Creating a pixbuf from image data that is already in memory.

<!-- ##### SECTION Long_Description ##### -->
  <para>
    The most basic way to create a pixbuf is to wrap an existing pixel
    buffer with a #GdkPixbuf structure.  You can use the
    gdk_pixbuf_new_from_data() function to do this You need to specify
    the destroy notification function that will be called when the
    data buffer needs to be freed; this will happen when a #GdkPixbuf
    is finalized by the reference counting functions If you have a
    chunk of static data compiled into your application, you can pass
    in #NULL as the destroy notification function so that the data
    will not be freed.
  </para>

  <para>
    The gdk_pixbuf_new() function can be used as a convenience to
    create a pixbuf with an empty buffer.  This is equivalent to
    allocating a data buffer using malloc() and then wrapping it with
    gdk_pixbuf_new_from_data().  The gdk_pixbuf_new() function will
    compute an optimal rowstride so that rendering can be performed
    with an efficient algorithm.
  </para>

  <para>
    As a special case, you can use the gdk_pixbuf_new_from_xpm_data()
    function to create a pixbuf from inline XPM image data.
  </para>

  <para>
    You can also copy an existing pixbuf with the gdk_pixbuf_copy()
    function.  This is not the same as just doing a gdk_pixbuf_ref()
    on the old pixbuf; the copy function will actually duplicate the
    pixel data in memory and create a new #GdkPixbuf structure for it.
  </para>

<!-- ##### SECTION See_Also ##### -->
  <para>
    gdk_pixbuf_finalize().
  </para>