.. _image-file-formats: Image file formats ================== The Python Imaging Library supports a wide variety of raster file formats. Nearly 30 different file formats can be identified and read by the library. Write support is less extensive, but most common interchange and presentation formats are supported. The :py:meth:`~PIL.Image.Image.open` function identifies files from their contents, not their names, but the :py:meth:`~PIL.Image.Image.save` method looks at the name to determine which format to use, unless the format is given explicitly. Fully supported formats ----------------------- BMP ^^^ PIL reads and writes Windows and OS/2 BMP files containing ``1``, ``L``, ``P``, or ``RGB`` data. 16-colour images are read as ``P`` images. Run-length encoding is not supported. The :py:meth:`~PIL.Image.Image.open` method sets the following :py:attr:`~PIL.Image.Image.info` properties: **compression** Set to ``bmp_rle`` if the file is run-length encoded. EPS ^^^ PIL identifies EPS files containing image data, and can read files that contain embedded raster images (ImageData descriptors). If Ghostscript is available, other EPS files can be read as well. The EPS driver can also write EPS images. If Ghostscript is available, you can call the :py:meth:`~PIL.Image.Image.load` method with the following parameter to affect how Ghostscript renders the EPS **scale** Affects the scale of the resultant rasterized image. If the EPS suggests that the image be rendered at 100px x 100px, setting this parameter to 2 will make the Ghostscript render a 200px x 200px image instead. The relative position of the bounding box is maintained:: im = Image.open(...) im.size #(100,100) im.load(scale=2) im.size #(200,200) GIF ^^^ PIL reads GIF87a and GIF89a versions of the GIF file format. The library writes run-length encoded GIF87a files. Note that GIF files are always read as grayscale (``L``) or palette mode (``P``) images. The :py:meth:`~PIL.Image.Image.open` method sets the following :py:attr:`~PIL.Image.Image.info` properties: **background** Default background color (a palette color index). **duration** Time between frames in an animation (in milliseconds). **transparency** Transparency color index. This key is omitted if the image is not transparent. **version** Version (either ``GIF87a`` or ``GIF89a``). Reading sequences ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The GIF loader supports the :py:meth:`~file.seek` and :py:meth:`~file.tell` methods. You can seek to the next frame (``im.seek(im.tell() + 1``), or rewind the file by seeking to the first frame. Random access is not supported. Reading local images ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The GIF loader creates an image memory the same size as the GIF file’s *logical screen size*, and pastes the actual pixel data (the *local image*) into this image. If you only want the actual pixel rectangle, you can manipulate the :py:attr:`~PIL.Image.Image.size` and :py:attr:`~PIL.Image.Image.tile` attributes before loading the file:: im = Image.open(...) if im.tile[0][0] == "gif": # only read the first "local image" from this GIF file tag, (x0, y0, x1, y1), offset, extra = im.tile[0] im.size = (x1 - x0, y1 - y0) im.tile = [(tag, (0, 0) + im.size, offset, extra)] IM ^^ IM is a format used by LabEye and other applications based on the IFUNC image processing library. The library reads and writes most uncompressed interchange versions of this format. IM is the only format that can store all internal PIL formats. JPEG ^^^^ PIL reads JPEG, JFIF, and Adobe JPEG files containing ``L``, ``RGB``, or ``CMYK`` data. It writes standard and progressive JFIF files. Using the :py:meth:`~PIL.Image.Image.draft` method, you can speed things up by converting ``RGB`` images to ``L``, and resize images to 1/2, 1/4 or 1/8 of their original size while loading them. The :py:meth:`~PIL.Image.Image.draft` method also configures the JPEG decoder to trade some quality for speed. The :py:meth:`~PIL.Image.Image.open` method sets the following :py:attr:`~PIL.Image.Image.info` properties: **jfif** JFIF application marker found. If the file is not a JFIF file, this key is not present. **adobe** Adobe application marker found. If the file is not an Adobe JPEG file, this key is not present. **progression** Indicates that this is a progressive JPEG file. The :py:meth:`~PIL.Image.Image.save` method supports the following options: **quality** The image quality, on a scale from 1 (worst) to 95 (best). The default is 75. Values above 95 should be avoided; 100 disables portions of the JPEG compression algorithm, and results in large files with hardly any gain in = image quality. **optimize** If present, indicates that the encoder should make an extra pass over the image in order to select optimal encoder settings. **progressive** If present, indicates that this image should be stored as a progressive JPEG file. .. note:: To enable JPEG support, you need to build and install the IJG JPEG library before building the Python Imaging Library. See the distribution README for details. JPEG 2000 ^^^^^^^^^ .. versionadded:: 2.4.0 PIL reads and writes JPEG 2000 files containing ``L``, ``LA``, ``RGB`` or ``RGBA`` data. It can also read files containing ``YCbCr`` data, which it converts on read into ``RGB`` or ``RGBA`` depending on whether or not there is an alpha channel. PIL supports JPEG 2000 raw codestreams (``.j2k`` files), as well as boxed JPEG 2000 files (``.j2p`` or ``.jpx`` files). PIL does *not* support files whose components have different sampling frequencies. When loading, if you set the ``mode`` on the image prior to the :py:meth:`~PIL.Image.Image.load` method being invoked, you can ask PIL to convert the image to either ``RGB`` or ``RGBA`` rather than choosing for itself. It is also possible to set ``reduce`` to the number of resolutions to discard (each one reduces the size of the resulting image by a factor of 2), and ``layers`` to specify the number of quality layers to load. The :py:meth:`~PIL.Image.Image.save` method supports the following options: **offset** The image offset, as a tuple of integers, e.g. (16, 16) **tile_offset** The tile offset, again as a 2-tuple of integers. **tile_size** The tile size as a 2-tuple. If not specified, or if set to None, the image will be saved without tiling. **quality_mode** Either `"rates"` or `"dB"` depending on the units you want to use to specify image quality. **quality_layers** A sequence of numbers, each of which represents either an approximate size reduction (if quality mode is `"rates"`) or a signal to noise ratio value in decibels. If not specified, defaults to a single layer of full quality. **num_resolutions** The number of different image resolutions to be stored (which corresponds to the number of Discrete Wavelet Transform decompositions plus one). **codeblock_size** The code-block size as a 2-tuple. Minimum size is 4 x 4, maximum is 1024 x 1024, with the additional restriction that no code-block may have more than 4096 coefficients (i.e. the product of the two numbers must be no greater than 4096). **precinct_size** The precinct size as a 2-tuple. Must be a power of two along both axes, and must be greater than the code-block size. **irreversible** If ``True``, use the lossy Irreversible Color Transformation followed by DWT 9-7. Defaults to ``False``, which means to use the Reversible Color Transformation with DWT 5-3. **progression** Controls the progression order; must be one of ``"LRCP"``, ``"RLCP"``, ``"RPCL"``, ``"PCRL"``, ``"CPRL"``. The letters stand for Component, Position, Resolution and Layer respectively and control the order of encoding, the idea being that e.g. an image encoded using LRCP mode can have its quality layers decoded as they arrive at the decoder, while one encoded using RLCP mode will have increasing resolutions decoded as they arrive, and so on. **cinema_mode** Set the encoder to produce output compliant with the digital cinema specifications. The options here are ``"no"`` (the default), ``"cinema2k-24"`` for 24fps 2K, ``"cinema2k-48"`` for 48fps 2K, and ``"cinema4k-24"`` for 24fps 4K. Note that for compliant 2K files, *at least one* of your image dimensions must match 2048 x 1080, while for compliant 4K files, *at least one* of the dimensions must match 4096 x 2160. .. note:: To enable JPEG 2000 support, you need to build and install the OpenJPEG library, version 2.0.0 or higher, before building the Python Imaging Library. Windows users can install the OpenJPEG binaries available on the OpenJPEG website, but must add them to their PATH in order to use PIL (if you fail to do this, you will get errors about not being able to load the ``_imaging`` DLL). MSP ^^^ PIL identifies and reads MSP files from Windows 1 and 2. The library writes uncompressed (Windows 1) versions of this format. PCX ^^^ PIL reads and writes PCX files containing ``1``, ``L``, ``P``, or ``RGB`` data. PNG ^^^ PIL identifies, reads, and writes PNG files containing ``1``, ``L``, ``P``, ``RGB``, or ``RGBA`` data. Interlaced files are supported as of v1.1.7. The :py:meth:`~PIL.Image.Image.open` method sets the following :py:attr:`~PIL.Image.Image.info` properties, when appropriate: **gamma** Gamma, given as a floating point number. **transparency** Transparency color index. This key is omitted if the image is not a transparent palette image. The :py:meth:`~PIL.Image.Image.save` method supports the following options: **optimize** If present, instructs the PNG writer to make the output file as small as possible. This includes extra processing in order to find optimal encoder settings. **transparency** For ``P``, ``L``, and ``RGB`` images, this option controls what color image to mark as transparent. **bits (experimental)** For ``P`` images, this option controls how many bits to store. If omitted, the PNG writer uses 8 bits (256 colors). **dictionary (experimental)** Set the ZLIB encoder dictionary. .. note:: To enable PNG support, you need to build and install the ZLIB compression library before building the Python Imaging Library. See the distribution README for details. PPM ^^^ PIL reads and writes PBM, PGM and PPM files containing ``1``, ``L`` or ``RGB`` data. SPIDER ^^^^^^ PIL reads and writes SPIDER image files of 32-bit floating point data ("F;32F"). PIL also reads SPIDER stack files containing sequences of SPIDER images. The :py:meth:`~file.seek` and :py:meth:`~file.tell` methods are supported, and random access is allowed. The :py:meth:`~PIL.Image.Image.open` method sets the following attributes: **format** Set to ``SPIDER`` **istack** Set to 1 if the file is an image stack, else 0. **nimages** Set to the number of images in the stack. A convenience method, :py:meth:`~PIL.Image.Image.convert2byte`, is provided for converting floating point data to byte data (mode ``L``):: im = Image.open('image001.spi').convert2byte() Writing files in SPIDER format ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The extension of SPIDER files may be any 3 alphanumeric characters. Therefore the output format must be specified explicitly:: im.save('newimage.spi', format='SPIDER') For more information about the SPIDER image processing package, see the `SPIDER home page`_ at `Wadsworth Center`_. .. _SPIDER home page: http://www.wadsworth.org/spider_doc/spider/docs/master.html .. _Wadsworth Center: http://www.wadsworth.org/ TIFF ^^^^ PIL reads and writes TIFF files. It can read both striped and tiled images, pixel and plane interleaved multi-band images, and either uncompressed, or Packbits, LZW, or JPEG compressed images. If you have libtiff and its headers installed, PIL can read and write many more kinds of compressed TIFF files. If not, PIL will always write uncompressed files. The :py:meth:`~PIL.Image.Image.open` method sets the following :py:attr:`~PIL.Image.Image.info` properties: **compression** Compression mode. **dpi** Image resolution as an (xdpi, ydpi) tuple, where applicable. You can use the :py:attr:`~PIL.Image.Image.tag` attribute to get more detailed information about the image resolution. .. versionadded:: 1.1.5 In addition, the :py:attr:`~PIL.Image.Image.tag` attribute contains a dictionary of decoded TIFF fields. Values are stored as either strings or tuples. Note that only short, long and ASCII tags are correctly unpacked by this release. Saving Tiff Images ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The :py:meth:`~PIL.Image.Image.save` method can take the following keyword arguments: **tiffinfo** A :py:class:`~PIL.TiffImagePlugin.ImageFileDirectory` object or dict object containing tiff tags and values. The TIFF field type is autodetected for Numeric and string values, any other types require using an :py:class:`~PIL.TiffImagePlugin.ImageFileDirectory` object and setting the type in :py:attr:`~PIL.TiffImagePlugin.ImageFileDirectory.tagtype` with the appropriate numerical value from ``TiffTags.TYPES``. .. versionadded:: 2.3.0 **compression** A string containing the desired compression method for the file. (valid only with libtiff installed) Valid compression methods are: ``[None, "tiff_ccitt", "group3", "group4", "tiff_jpeg", "tiff_adobe_deflate", "tiff_thunderscan", "tiff_deflate", "tiff_sgilog", "tiff_sgilog24", "tiff_raw_16"]`` These arguments to set the tiff header fields are an alternative to using the general tags available through tiffinfo. **description** **software** **date time** **artist** **copyright** Strings **resolution unit** A string of "inch", "centimeter" or "cm" **resolution** **x resolution** **y resolution** **dpi** Either a Float, Integer, or 2 tuple of (numerator, denominator). Resolution implies an equal x and y resolution, dpi also implies a unit of inches. WebP ^^^^ PIL reads and writes WebP files. The specifics of PIL's capabilities with this format are currently undocumented. The :py:meth:`~PIL.Image.Image.save` method supports the following options: **lossless** If present, instructs the WEBP writer to use lossless compression. **quality** Integer, 1-100, Defaults to 80. Sets the quality level for lossy compression. **icc_procfile** The ICC Profile to include in the saved file. Only supported if the system webp library was built with webpmux support. **exif** The exif data to include in the saved file. Only supported if the system webp library was built with webpmux support. XBM ^^^ PIL reads and writes X bitmap files (mode ``1``). XV Thumbnails ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ PIL can read XV thumbnail files. Read-only formats ----------------- CUR ^^^ CUR is used to store cursors on Windows. The CUR decoder reads the largest available cursor. Animated cursors are not supported. DCX ^^^ DCX is a container file format for PCX files, defined by Intel. The DCX format is commonly used in fax applications. The DCX decoder can read files containing ``1``, ``L``, ``P``, or ``RGB`` data. When the file is opened, only the first image is read. You can use :py:meth:`~file.seek` or :py:mod:`~PIL.ImageSequence` to read other images. FLI, FLC ^^^^^^^^ PIL reads Autodesk FLI and FLC animations. The :py:meth:`~PIL.Image.Image.open` method sets the following :py:attr:`~PIL.Image.Image.info` properties: **duration** The delay (in milliseconds) between each frame. FPX ^^^ PIL reads Kodak FlashPix files. In the current version, only the highest resolution image is read from the file, and the viewing transform is not taken into account. .. note:: To enable full FlashPix support, you need to build and install the IJG JPEG library before building the Python Imaging Library. See the distribution README for details. GBR ^^^ The GBR decoder reads GIMP brush files. The :py:meth:`~PIL.Image.Image.open` method sets the following :py:attr:`~PIL.Image.Image.info` properties: **description** The brush name. GD ^^ PIL reads uncompressed GD files. Note that this file format cannot be automatically identified, so you must use :py:func:`PIL.GdImageFile.open` to read such a file. The :py:meth:`~PIL.Image.Image.open` method sets the following :py:attr:`~PIL.Image.Image.info` properties: **transparency** Transparency color index. This key is omitted if the image is not transparent. ICO ^^^ ICO is used to store icons on Windows. The largest available icon is read. ICNS ^^^^ PIL reads Mac OS X ``.icns`` files. By default, the largest available icon is read, though you can override this by setting the :py:attr:`~PIL.Image.Image.size` property before calling :py:meth:`~PIL.Image.Image.load`. The :py:meth:`~PIL.Image.Image.open` method sets the following :py:attr:`~PIL.Image.Image.info` property: **sizes** A list of supported sizes found in this icon file; these are a 3-tuple, ``(width, height, scale)``, where ``scale`` is 2 for a retina icon and 1 for a standard icon. You *are* permitted to use this 3-tuple format for the :py:attr:`~PIL.Image.Image.size` property if you set it before calling :py:meth:`~PIL.Image.Image.load`; after loading, the size will be reset to a 2-tuple containing pixel dimensions (so, e.g. if you ask for ``(512, 512, 2)``, the final value of :py:attr:`~PIL.Image.Image.size` will be ``(1024, 1024)``). IMT ^^^ PIL reads Image Tools images containing ``L`` data. IPTC/NAA ^^^^^^^^ PIL provides limited read support for IPTC/NAA newsphoto files. MCIDAS ^^^^^^ PIL identifies and reads 8-bit McIdas area files. MIC (read only) PIL identifies and reads Microsoft Image Composer (MIC) files. When opened, the first sprite in the file is loaded. You can use :py:meth:`~file.seek` and :py:meth:`~file.tell` to read other sprites from the file. PCD ^^^ PIL reads PhotoCD files containing ``RGB`` data. By default, the 768x512 resolution is read. You can use the :py:meth:`~PIL.Image.Image.draft` method to read the lower resolution versions instead, thus effectively resizing the image to 384x256 or 192x128. Higher resolutions cannot be read by the Python Imaging Library. PSD ^^^ PIL identifies and reads PSD files written by Adobe Photoshop 2.5 and 3.0. SGI ^^^ PIL reads uncompressed ``L``, ``RGB``, and ``RGBA`` files. TGA ^^^ PIL reads 24- and 32-bit uncompressed and run-length encoded TGA files. WAL ^^^ .. versionadded:: 1.1.4 PIL reads Quake2 WAL texture files. Note that this file format cannot be automatically identified, so you must use the open function in the :py:mod:`~PIL.WalImageFile` module to read files in this format. By default, a Quake2 standard palette is attached to the texture. To override the palette, use the putpalette method. XPM ^^^ PIL reads X pixmap files (mode ``P``) with 256 colors or less. The :py:meth:`~PIL.Image.Image.open` method sets the following :py:attr:`~PIL.Image.Image.info` properties: **transparency** Transparency color index. This key is omitted if the image is not transparent. Write-only formats ------------------ PALM ^^^^ PIL provides write-only support for PALM pixmap files. The format code is ``Palm``, the extension is ``.palm``. PDF ^^^ PIL can write PDF (Acrobat) images. Such images are written as binary PDF 1.1 files, using either JPEG or HEX encoding depending on the image mode (and whether JPEG support is available or not). PIXAR (read only) PIL provides limited support for PIXAR raster files. The library can identify and read “dumped” RGB files. The format code is ``PIXAR``. Identify-only formats --------------------- BUFR ^^^^ .. versionadded:: 1.1.3 PIL provides a stub driver for BUFR files. To add read or write support to your application, use :py:func:`PIL.BufrStubImagePlugin.register_handler`. FITS ^^^^ .. versionadded:: 1.1.5 PIL provides a stub driver for FITS files. To add read or write support to your application, use :py:func:`PIL.FitsStubImagePlugin.register_handler`. GRIB ^^^^ .. versionadded:: 1.1.5 PIL provides a stub driver for GRIB files. The driver requires the file to start with a GRIB header. If you have files with embedded GRIB data, or files with multiple GRIB fields, your application has to seek to the header before passing the file handle to PIL. To add read or write support to your application, use :py:func:`PIL.GribStubImagePlugin.register_handler`. HDF5 ^^^^ .. versionadded:: 1.1.5 PIL provides a stub driver for HDF5 files. To add read or write support to your application, use :py:func:`PIL.Hdf5StubImagePlugin.register_handler`. MPEG ^^^^ PIL identifies MPEG files. WMF ^^^ PIL can identify placable WMF files. In PIL 1.1.4 and earlier, the WMF driver provides some limited rendering support, but not enough to be useful for any real application. In PIL 1.1.5 and later, the WMF driver is a stub driver. To add WMF read or write support to your application, use :py:func:`PIL.WmfImagePlugin.register_handler` to register a WMF handler. :: from PIL import Image from PIL import WmfImagePlugin class WmfHandler: def open(self, im): ... def load(self, im): ... return image def save(self, im, fp, filename): ... wmf_handler = WmfHandler() WmfImagePlugin.register_handler(wmf_handler) im = Image.open("sample.wmf")