Scientific Computing with Python 3

Reading and writing images

SciPy comes with some basic functions for handling images. The module function will read images to NumPy arrays. The function will save an array as an image. The following will read a JPEG image to an array, print the shape and type, then create a new array with a resized image, and write the new image to file:

import scipy.misc as sm

# read image to array
im = sm.imread("test.jpg") 
print(im.shape)   # (128, 128, 3)
print(im.dtype)   # uint8

# resize image
im_small = sm.imresize(im, (64,64))
print(im_small.shape)   # (64, 64, 3)

# write result to new image file
sm.imsave("test_small.jpg", im_small)

Note the data type. Images are almost always stored with pixel values in the range 0...255  as 8-bit unsigned integers. The ...