this is odd. I thought I had done this before, but, I cannot find a way to access image data from an image file in hython.

In the expression language manpage for the tex function it says:
REPLACED BY
hou.pixelColorInFileByUV

which does not exist. In fact, I could find no means at all to access image data in python in a SOP…..

is this correct? :shock:

Would there even be any image data to manipulate in SOPs?

I don't know, but maybe you need a SHOP net as an intermediate step?

You can still run hscript expressions in Python with hou.hscriptExpression().