VIPS from Python
3
VIPS Library
Using VIPS
How to use the VIPS library from Python
Using VIPS from Python
VIPS comes with a convenient, high-level Python API based
on gobject-introspection
. As long as you can get GOI
for your platform, you should be able to use vips. The
Vips.py
file
needs to be copied to the overrides directory of your GOI install,
and you need to have the vips typelib on your
GI_TYPELIB_PATH
.
VIPS from Python example
#!/usr/bin/python
import sys
from gi.repository import Vips
im = Vips.Image.new_from_file(sys.argv[1])
im = im.extract_area(100, 100, im.width - 200, im.height - 200)
im = im.similarity(scale = 0.9)
mask = Vips.Image.new_from_array([[-1, -1, -1],
[-1, 16, -1],
[-1, -1, -1]], scale = 8)
im = im.conv(mask)
im.write_to_file(sys.argv[2])
Reading the example, the first line loads the input file. You can append
load options to the argument list as keyword arguments, for example:
im = Vips.Image.new_from_file(sys.argv[1], access = Vips.Access.SEQUENTIAL)
See the various loaders for a list of the available options for each
file format. The C
equivalent to this function, vips_image_new_from_file(), has more
extensive documentation.
There are
several other constructors: you can load a formatted image (for example,
a JPEG format image) from a string with .new_from_buffer()
.
The next line crops 100 pixels off every edge. See the docs for the C
function vips_extract_area() for details of the parameters. You can use
.crop()
as a synonym, if you like.
im.width
gets the image width in pixels, see
vips_image_get_width() and friends for a list of the other getters.
The similarity
line shrinks by 10%, see the docs for the C
function vips_similarity() for details. By default it uses bilinear
interpolation, use interpolate
to pick another
interpolator, for example:
im = im.similarity(scale = 0.9, interpolate = Vips.Interpolate.new("bicubic"))
.new_from_array()
makes an image from a 2D array. The
scale
keyword argument lets you set a divisor for
convolution, handy for integer convolutions. You can set
offset
as well. See vips_conv() for details on the vips
convolution operator.
Finally, .write_to_file()
sends the image back to the
filesystem. There's also .write_to_buffer()
to make a
string containing the formatted image.
pyvips8
Basics
The Python interface comes in two main parts. First, the C source code
to libvips has been marked up with special comments describing the
internals in a standard way. These comments are read by
gobject-introspection when libvips is compiled and used to generate a
typelib, a description of the library's internals. When your Python
program starts, the import line:
from gi.repository import Vips
loads the typelib and creates Python classes for all the objects and
all the functions in the library. You can then call these functions
from your code, and they will call into libvips for you. C functions
become Python functions in an obvious way: vips_operation_new(),
for example, the constructor for the class #VipsOperation, becomes
Vips.Operation.new()
.
Using libvips like this is possible, but a bit painful. To make the API
seem more pythonesque, vips includes a set of overrides which wrap up
the bare functions created by gobject-introspection in a nicer package.
These overrides do the following things:
Automatic wrapping of vips operations. It intercepts member lookup
on the Vips.Image
class and looks for vips operations
with that name. So the vips operation "add", which appears in the
C API as vips_add(), appears in Python as
Vips.Image.add
.
Automatic wrapping of operation arguments. The first input image
argument becomes the self
argument. If there are no
input image arguments, the operation appears as a class member.
Optional input
arguments become keyword arguments. The result is a list of all
the output arguments, or a single output if there is only one.
Optional output arguments are enabled with a boolean keyword
argument of that name. For example, "min" (the operation which
appears in the C API as vips_min()), can be called like this:
min_value = im.min()
and min_value
will be a floating point value giving
the minimum value in the image. "min" can also find the position
of the minimum value with the x
and y
optional output arguments. Call it like this:
min_value, x_pos, y_pos = im.min(x = True, y = True)
Automatic type conversion. The override looks at the type of
argument required by the operation and converts the value you
supply, when it can. For example, "linear" takes a
#VipsArrayDouble as an argument for the constant to use for
multiplication. You can supply this value as an integer, a float,
or some kind of compound object and it will be converted for you.
It does a couple of more ambitious conversions. If an operation
takes several input images, you can use a constant for all but
one of them and the wrapper will make a constant image for you.
For example, .bandjoin()