Read a base 64 encoded image from memory using OpenCv python library
Question:
I’m working on an app that to do some facial recognition from a webcam stream. I get base64 encoded data uri’s of the canvas and want to use it to do something like this:
cv2.imshow('image',img)
The data URI looks something like this:
data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhEAAQAMQAAORHHOVSKudfOulrSOp3WOyDZu6QdvCchPGolfO0o/XBs/fNwfjZ0frl3/zy7////wAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACH5BAkAABAALAAAAAAQABAAAAVVICSOZGlCQAosJ6mu7fiyZeKqNKToQGDsM8hBADgUXoGAiqhSvp5QAnQKGIgUhwFUYLCVDFCrKUE1lBavAViFIDlTImbKC5Gm2hB0SlBCBMQiB0UjIQA7
So, for clarity I’ve shown what the image looks like so the base64 string is not broken.
<img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhEAAQAMQAAORHHOVSKudfOulrSOp3WOyDZu6QdvCchPGolfO0o/XBs/fNwfjZ0frl3/zy7////wAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACH5BAkAABAALAAAAAAQABAAAAVVICSOZGlCQAosJ6mu7fiyZeKqNKToQGDsM8hBADgUXoGAiqhSvp5QAnQKGIgUhwFUYLCVDFCrKUE1lBavAViFIDlTImbKC5Gm2hB0SlBCBMQiB0UjIQA7">
The official doc says, that imread
accepts a file path as the argument. From this SO answer, if I do something like:
import base64
imgdata = base64.b64decode(imgstring) #I use imgdata as this variable itself in references below
filename = 'some_image.jpg'
with open(filename, 'wb') as f:
f.write(imgdata)
The above code snippet works and the image file gets generated properly. However I don’t think so many File IO operations are feasible considering I’d be doing this for every frame of the stream. I want to be able to read the image into the memory directly creating the img
object.
I have tried two solutions that seem to be working for some people.
-
Using PIL reference:
pilImage = Image.open(StringIO(imgdata))
npImage = np.array(pilImage)
matImage = cv.fromarray(npImage)
I get cv
not defined as I have openCV3 installed which is available to me as cv2
module. I tried img = cv2.imdecode(npImage,0)
, this returns nothing.
-
Getting the bytes from decoded string and converting it into an numpy array of sorts
file_bytes = numpy.asarray(bytearray(imgdata), dtype=numpy.uint8)
img = cv2.imdecode(file_bytes, 0) #Here as well I get returned nothing
The documentation doesn’t really mention what the imdecode
function returns. However, from the errors that I encountered, I guess it is expecting a numpy array
or a scalar
as the first argument. How do I get a handle on that image in memory so that I can do cv2.imshow('image',img)
and all kinds of cool stuff thereafter.
I hope I was able to make myself clear.
Answers:
You can just use both cv2 and pillow like this:
import base64
from PIL import Image
import cv2
from StringIO import StringIO
import numpy as np
def readb64(base64_string):
sbuf = StringIO()
sbuf.write(base64.b64decode(base64_string))
pimg = Image.open(sbuf)
return cv2.cvtColor(np.array(pimg), cv2.COLOR_RGB2BGR)
cvimg = readb64('R0lGODlhEAAQAMQAAORHHOVSKudfOulrSOp3WOyDZu6QdvCchPGolfO0o/XBs/fNwfjZ0frl3/zy7////wAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACH5BAkAABAALAAAAAAQABAAAAVVICSOZGlCQAosJ6mu7fiyZeKqNKToQGDsM8hBADgUXoGAiqhSvp5QAnQKGIgUhwFUYLCVDFCrKUE1lBavAViFIDlTImbKC5Gm2hB0SlBCBMQiB0UjIQA7')
cv2.imshow(cvimg)
This worked for me on python 2, and doesn’t require PIL/pillow or any other dependencies (except cv2):
Edit: for python3 use base64.b64decode(encoded_data)
to decode instead.
import cv2
import numpy as np
def data_uri_to_cv2_img(uri):
encoded_data = uri.split(',')[1]
nparr = np.fromstring(encoded_data.decode('base64'), np.uint8)
img = cv2.imdecode(nparr, cv2.IMREAD_COLOR)
return img
data_uri = "data:image/jpeg;base64,/9j/4AAQ..."
img = data_uri_to_cv2_img(data_uri)
cv2.imshow(img)
This is my solution for python 3.7 and without using PIL
import base64
def readb64(uri):
encoded_data = uri.split(',')[1]
nparr = np.fromstring(base64.b64decode(encoded_data), np.uint8)
img = cv2.imdecode(nparr, cv2.IMREAD_COLOR)
return img
i hope that this solutions works for all
I found this simple solution.
import cv2
import numpy as np
import base64
image = "" # raw data with base64 encoding
decoded_data = base64.b64decode(image)
np_data = np.fromstring(decoded_data,np.uint8)
img = cv2.imdecode(np_data,cv2.IMREAD_UNCHANGED)
cv2.imshow("test", img)
cv2.waitKey(0)
Source : https://gist.github.com/HoweChen/7cdd09b08147133d8e1fbe9b52c24768
I’m working on an app that to do some facial recognition from a webcam stream. I get base64 encoded data uri’s of the canvas and want to use it to do something like this:
cv2.imshow('image',img)
The data URI looks something like this:
data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhEAAQAMQAAORHHOVSKudfOulrSOp3WOyDZu6QdvCchPGolfO0o/XBs/fNwfjZ0frl3/zy7////wAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACH5BAkAABAALAAAAAAQABAAAAVVICSOZGlCQAosJ6mu7fiyZeKqNKToQGDsM8hBADgUXoGAiqhSvp5QAnQKGIgUhwFUYLCVDFCrKUE1lBavAViFIDlTImbKC5Gm2hB0SlBCBMQiB0UjIQA7
So, for clarity I’ve shown what the image looks like so the base64 string is not broken.
<img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhEAAQAMQAAORHHOVSKudfOulrSOp3WOyDZu6QdvCchPGolfO0o/XBs/fNwfjZ0frl3/zy7////wAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACH5BAkAABAALAAAAAAQABAAAAVVICSOZGlCQAosJ6mu7fiyZeKqNKToQGDsM8hBADgUXoGAiqhSvp5QAnQKGIgUhwFUYLCVDFCrKUE1lBavAViFIDlTImbKC5Gm2hB0SlBCBMQiB0UjIQA7">
The official doc says, that imread
accepts a file path as the argument. From this SO answer, if I do something like:
import base64
imgdata = base64.b64decode(imgstring) #I use imgdata as this variable itself in references below
filename = 'some_image.jpg'
with open(filename, 'wb') as f:
f.write(imgdata)
The above code snippet works and the image file gets generated properly. However I don’t think so many File IO operations are feasible considering I’d be doing this for every frame of the stream. I want to be able to read the image into the memory directly creating the img
object.
I have tried two solutions that seem to be working for some people.
-
Using PIL reference:
pilImage = Image.open(StringIO(imgdata)) npImage = np.array(pilImage) matImage = cv.fromarray(npImage)
I get
cv
not defined as I have openCV3 installed which is available to me ascv2
module. I triedimg = cv2.imdecode(npImage,0)
, this returns nothing. -
Getting the bytes from decoded string and converting it into an numpy array of sorts
file_bytes = numpy.asarray(bytearray(imgdata), dtype=numpy.uint8) img = cv2.imdecode(file_bytes, 0) #Here as well I get returned nothing
The documentation doesn’t really mention what the imdecode
function returns. However, from the errors that I encountered, I guess it is expecting a numpy array
or a scalar
as the first argument. How do I get a handle on that image in memory so that I can do cv2.imshow('image',img)
and all kinds of cool stuff thereafter.
I hope I was able to make myself clear.
You can just use both cv2 and pillow like this:
import base64
from PIL import Image
import cv2
from StringIO import StringIO
import numpy as np
def readb64(base64_string):
sbuf = StringIO()
sbuf.write(base64.b64decode(base64_string))
pimg = Image.open(sbuf)
return cv2.cvtColor(np.array(pimg), cv2.COLOR_RGB2BGR)
cvimg = readb64('R0lGODlhEAAQAMQAAORHHOVSKudfOulrSOp3WOyDZu6QdvCchPGolfO0o/XBs/fNwfjZ0frl3/zy7////wAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACH5BAkAABAALAAAAAAQABAAAAVVICSOZGlCQAosJ6mu7fiyZeKqNKToQGDsM8hBADgUXoGAiqhSvp5QAnQKGIgUhwFUYLCVDFCrKUE1lBavAViFIDlTImbKC5Gm2hB0SlBCBMQiB0UjIQA7')
cv2.imshow(cvimg)
This worked for me on python 2, and doesn’t require PIL/pillow or any other dependencies (except cv2):
Edit: for python3 use base64.b64decode(encoded_data)
to decode instead.
import cv2
import numpy as np
def data_uri_to_cv2_img(uri):
encoded_data = uri.split(',')[1]
nparr = np.fromstring(encoded_data.decode('base64'), np.uint8)
img = cv2.imdecode(nparr, cv2.IMREAD_COLOR)
return img
data_uri = "data:image/jpeg;base64,/9j/4AAQ..."
img = data_uri_to_cv2_img(data_uri)
cv2.imshow(img)
This is my solution for python 3.7 and without using PIL
import base64
def readb64(uri):
encoded_data = uri.split(',')[1]
nparr = np.fromstring(base64.b64decode(encoded_data), np.uint8)
img = cv2.imdecode(nparr, cv2.IMREAD_COLOR)
return img
i hope that this solutions works for all
I found this simple solution.
import cv2
import numpy as np
import base64
image = "" # raw data with base64 encoding
decoded_data = base64.b64decode(image)
np_data = np.fromstring(decoded_data,np.uint8)
img = cv2.imdecode(np_data,cv2.IMREAD_UNCHANGED)
cv2.imshow("test", img)
cv2.waitKey(0)
Source : https://gist.github.com/HoweChen/7cdd09b08147133d8e1fbe9b52c24768