We investigate the computational power of d-dimensional contextual array grammars with matrix control and regular control languages. For $$d\ge 2$$, d-dimensional contextual array grammars are less powerful than matrix contextual array grammars, which themselves are less powerful than contextual array grammars with regular control languages. Yet in the 1-dimensional case, for a one-letter alphabet, the family of 1-dimensional array languages generated by contextual array grammars with regular control languages coincides with the family of regular 1-dimensional array languages, whereas for alphabets with more than one letter, we obtain the array images of the linear languages.