scipy.misc.imread

scipy.misc.imread(name, flatten=False, mode=None)

Read an image from a file as an array.

Parameters:

name : str or file object

The file name or file object to be read.

flatten : bool, optional

If True, flattens the color layers into a single gray-scale layer.

mode : str, optional

Mode to convert image to, e.g. 'RGB'. See the Notes for more details.

Returns:

imread : ndarray

The array obtained by reading the image.

Notes

imread uses the Python Imaging Library (PIL) to read an image. The following notes are from the PIL documentation.

mode can be one of the following strings:

• ‘L’ (8-bit pixels, black and white)
• ‘P’ (8-bit pixels, mapped to any other mode using a color palette)
• ‘RGB’ (3x8-bit pixels, true color)
• ‘RGBA’ (4x8-bit pixels, true color with transparency mask)
• ‘CMYK’ (4x8-bit pixels, color separation)
• ‘YCbCr’ (3x8-bit pixels, color video format)
• ‘I’ (32-bit signed integer pixels)
• ‘F’ (32-bit floating point pixels)

PIL also provides limited support for a few special modes, including ‘LA’ (‘L’ with alpha), ‘RGBX’ (true color with padding) and ‘RGBa’ (true color with premultiplied alpha).

When translating a color image to black and white (mode ‘L’, ‘I’ or ‘F’), the library uses the ITU-R 601-2 luma transform:

L = R * 299/1000 + G * 587/1000 + B * 114/1000

When flatten is True, the image is converted using mode ‘F’. When mode is not None and flatten is True, the image is first converted according to mode, and the result is then flattened using mode ‘F’.