Python Pillow Library: Introduction

Photo by Anne Lambeck: https://unsplash.com/photos/5VC4thmwMms

Overview

Excited to learn about image processing in Python? Look no further! Python Pillow is a powerful library that offers a wide range of features for processing and manipulating images.

This library is a must-have for anyone interested in working with images in Python.

Importance of Image Processing in Python

Image processing is a crucial aspect of numerous industries, including computer vision, robotics, and gaming. Its main goal is to analyze and manipulate images to extract meaningful information and perform tasks like object detection, image classification, and image segmentation.

Luckily, Python has several libraries that offer image processing capabilities and Pillow is one of the most popular due to its ease of use and extensive range of features.

Overview of Features Offered by Pillow

Pillow, as a powerful image processing library, offers a wide range of features that make it a go-to tool for various image processing applications. In this section, we will take a closer look at the key features that Pillow provides for image processing.

  • Opening and displaying images
  • Basic image operations such as resizing, rotating, and cropping
  • Understanding image modes and formats
  • Image filters and enhancements, including smoothing, blurring, sharpening, and adjusting brightness and contrast
  • Drawing on images, including adding shapes and text
  • Image manipulation techniques like flipping, mirroring, and merging multiple images
  • Saving images in different formats

Getting Started with Python Pillow

Installing the Pillow Library

To get started with Pillow, you’ll first need to install it. You can install Pillow using the pip package manager by running the following command in your terminal.

Opening and Displaying an Image using Pillow

Once you have Pillow installed, you can start working with images.

The first step is to open an image and display it. You can use the Image module from the Pillow library to open an image, and the image.show method to display it. Here’s an example.

Note: Make sure to input the correct image name in the Image.open(‘filename’) code snippet.

Basic Operations on an Image

Pillow offers several basic operations for processing images, including resizing, rotating, and cropping. Here’s an example of each:

Showing how to check image size, file name, format, and format description
Result:
Rotating an image

Rotating an image in Pillow can be done using the Image.rotate() method. The method takes one argument, which is the angle of rotation in degrees

Resizing an image

The resize method takes as input the desired size of the resized image as a tuple, where the first element is the width and the second element is the height.

Result:

Cropping an image

You can crop an image using the crop method of the Image class. The crop method takes a tuple as an argument that specifies the region to be cropped.

The tuple should contain four values, which represent the left, upper, right, and lower pixel coordinates of the crop region, respectively.

Sharpening and blurring an image.

Pillow provides several functions for images, including the ImageFilter module and the filter method of the Image class. The filter method takes a filter from the ImageFilter module as an argument, and applies the filter to the image.

Sharpening
Blurring

In order to show and exaggerate how blurry the image is we used this code snippet instead.

Grayscale

Conclusion

Pillow is a powerful and versatile image processing library that provides a rich set of features for processing images in Python. From basic operations such as opening, resizing, and saving images, to more advanced operations such as cropping, filtering, and converting images

Check out the Pillow documentation to learn more about image processing with python: https://pillow.readthedocs.io/en/stable/

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