Image Processing: How to read image from string in python ?

Reading image from string base64

🚩 In this tutorial we are going to investigate together how to read image string base64 in python language.

To be able to do processing on image in python some of modules should be used. We are going to use PIL to demonstrate image at this point.

Let's code it !

To get an image as string we need to convert base64 format firstly. Python base64 module is also used for this process.

Let's start with importing the required modules.

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import base64
   import io
   from PIL import Image

That's it !
So, the first we are going to convert image to base64 using python. Let's do it !

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def read_string():
      with open("tux.jpg", "rb") as image:
          image_string = base64.b64encode(image.read())

      return image_string

I have used a local image "tux.jpg" so, you can use anything that has true image format. Let me clarify the codes above.

Step 1: I have defined function read_string() and opened the image in rb mode. The variable image_string that inside of the function holds base64 string.

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if __name__ == "__main__":
       base64_string = read_string()
       print(base64_string)

When I call the function in the main method we probably are going to get an output like this:

b'/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQAAAQABAAD/7QBsUGhvdG9zaG9wIDMuMAA4QklNBAQAAAAAAE8cAVoAAxslRxwCAAACAAAcAnQAO8KpIFNvZmlhWW91c2hpIC0gaHR0cDovL3d3dy5yZWRidWJibGUuY29tL3Blb3BsZS9zb2ZpYXlvdXNoAP/bAEMAAwICAwICAwMDAwQDAwQFCAUFBAQFCgcHBggMCgwMCwoLCw0OEhANDhEOCwsQ

....

/5W09f+V+gfFfqHxX6h8V+ofFfqHxX6h8V+ofFfvHxX7x8V+8fFfvHxU6Y9FblW4A0P8Aj2//2Q=='

It's too long as you see but there is no problem. Not too big data to process on programming language !

Let's decode the image base64 string vice versa.

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def decode_base64():
       base64_string = read_string()
       decoded_string = io.BytesIO(base64.b64decode(base64_string))
       img = Image.open(decoded_string)
       return img.show()

I have used the other function inside this function to get image string and the other function returns image string as you know. Anyways so base64_string variable holds image string in base64 format and decoded. The last I have used Image function from PIL to show image.

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if __name__ == "__main__":
       decode_base64()

When I call the function decode_base64() the image will be open.

Output:

The entire code is shared below:
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import base64
import io
from PIL import Image


def read_string():
    with open("tux.jpg", "rb") as image:
        image_string = base64.b64encode(image.read())

    return image_string

def decode_base64():

    base64_string = read_string()
    decoded_string = io.BytesIO(base64.b64decode(base64_string))
    img = Image.open(decoded_string)
    return img.show()



if __name__ == "__main__":
    base64_string = read_string()
    print(base64_string)

    decode_base64()