Python PIL | Image.frombuffer() method

PIL is the Python Imaging Library which provides the python interpreter with image editing capabilities. The Image module provides a class with the same name which is used to represent a PIL image. The module also provides a number of factory functions, including functions to load images from files, and to create new images.

PIL.Image.frombuffer() Creates an image memory referencing pixel data in a byte buffer.

Note that this function decodes pixel data only, not entire images. If you have an entire image file in a string, wrap it in a BytesIO object, and use open() to load it.

Syntax: PIL.Image.frombuffer(mode, size, data, decoder_name=’raw’, *args)

Parameters:
mode – The image mode. See: Modes
size – The image size.
data – A byte buffer containing raw data for the given mode.
decoder_name – What decoder to use.
args – Additional parameters for the given decoder. For the default encoder (“raw”), it’s recommended that you provide the full set of parameters:frombuffer(mode, size, data, "raw", mode, 0, 1)

Returns: An Image object.

Image Used:

# importing image object from PIL
from PIL import Image

# creating an image object
im = Image.open(r"C:\Users\System-Pc\Desktop\rose.jpg")
im1 = im.tobytes("xbm", "rgb")
img = Image.frombuffer("L", (4, 4), im1, 'raw', "L", 0, 1)

# creating list
img2 = list(img.getdata())
print(img2)

Output:

[48, 120, 102, 102, 44, 48, 120, 102, 102, 44, 48, 120, 102, 102, 44, 48]

Another Example: Here we use another image.

Image Used:

# importing image object from PIL
from PIL import Image

# creating an image object
im = Image.open(r"C:\Users\System-Pc\Desktop\ellipse1.png")
im1 = im.tobytes("xbm", "rgb")
img = Image.frombuffer("L", (10, 10), im1, 'raw', "L", 0, 1)

# creating list
img2 = list(img.getdata())
print(img2)

Output:

[48, 120, 56, 56, 44, 48, 120, 56, 56, 44, 48, 120, 56, 56, 44, 48, 120, 56, 56, 44, 48, 120, 56, 56, 44, 48, 120, 56, 56, 44, 48, 120, 56, 56, 44, 48, 120, 56, 56, 44, 48, 120, 56, 56, 44, 48, 120, 56, 56, 44, 48, 120, 56, 56, 44, 48, 120, 56, 56, 44, 48, 120, 56, 56, 44, 48, 120, 56, 56, 44, 48, 120, 56, 56, 44, 10, 48, 120, 56, 56, 44, 48, 120, 56, 56, 44, 48, 120, 56, 56, 44, 48, 120, 56, 56, 44, 48, 120, 56, 56]