If you want to use it in OpenCV, then you can use cv2.split(), bearing in mind the channels of your image:
b, g, r = cv2.split(image)
b, g, r, a = cv2.split(image)
Or, if you might like the direct numpy format, you can use directly [which seems more efficient according to @igaurav comments]
b, g, r = image[:, :, 0], image[:, :, 1], image[:, :, 2]
b, g, r, a = image[:, :, 0], image[:, :, 1], image[:, :, 2], image[:, :, 3]
np.shape[2] .