# mahotas-imread: Read Image Files

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IO with images and numpy arrays.

Mahotas-imread is a simple module with a small number of functions:

- `imread`:   Reads an image file
- `imread_multi`:   Reads an image file with multiple images. Currently, TIFF and STK (a TIFF sub-based format) support this function.
- `imsave`:   Writes an image file

Example (which uses [mahotas](https://luispedro.org/software/mahotas)
for Gaussian filtering):


```python
from imread import imread, imsave
from mahotas import gaussian_filter
lena = imread('lena.jpeg')

lena = gaussian_filter(lena.astype(float), 4.)
imsave('lena-filtered.jpeg', lena)
```

This grew out of frustration at current image loading solutions in
Python, in either my packages \[[mahotas](https://mahotas.rtfd.io)\] or
packages from others \[[scikit-image](https://scikit-image.org/), for
example\].

The relationship with numpy is very contained and this could be easily
repurposed to load images in other frameworks, even other programming
languages.

[Online documentation](https://imread.rtfd.io/)

Python versions 2.6, 2.7, 3.3+ are officially supported.

## Citation

::: {#Citation}
If you use imread on a published publication, please cite the main
[mahotas](https://mahotas.rtfd.io) paper (imread is a spin-off of
mahotas):
:::

> **Luis Pedro Coelho** Mahotas: Open source software for scriptable
> computer vision in Journal of Open Research Software, vol 1, 2013.
> \[[DOI](https://dx.doi.org/10.5334/jors.ac)\]

In Bibtex format:

```
@article{mahotas,
    author = {Luis Pedro Coelho},
    title = {Mahotas: Open source software for scriptable computer vision},
    journal = {Journal of Open Research Software},
    year = {2013},
    doi = {https://dx.doi.org/10.5334/jors.ac},
    month = {July},
    volume = {1}
}
```

### Installation/Dependencies

The easiest environment to install mahotas-imread is anaconda, through
[conda-forge](https://conda-forge.github.io). Just use:


```bash
conda config --add channels conda-forge
conda install imread
```

To compile on debian/ubuntu:

```bash
sudo apt-get install libpng12-dev libtiff4-dev libwebp-dev
sudo apt-get install xcftools
```

To compile on Mac:

```bash
sudo port install libpng tiff webp
```

Either way, you can then compile with:

```bash
python setup.py build
```

and install with:

```bash
python setup.py install
```

On Windows, you can also just download a pre-built package from [C.
Gohlke\'s
repository](https://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/#imread)

On nix, you can use:

```
nix-env -iA nixpkgs.python3Packages.imread
```

or use the `pkgs.python3Packages.imread` object in your `*.nix` files.

## Links & Contacts

- *Documentation*: https://imread.readthedocs.io/
- *Issue Tracker*: [github imread issues](https://github.com/luispedro/imread)
- *Mailing List*: Use the [pythonvision mailing list](https://groups.google.com/group/pythonvision?pli=1) for questions, bug submissions, etc.
- *Main Author & Maintainer*: [Luis Pedro Coelho](https://luispedro.org) (follow on [twitter](https://twitter.com/luispedrocoelho) or [github](https://github.com/luispedro)).

### History

## Version 0.7.5 (2023-11-22)

-   Fix build issue (#43, patch by \@carlosal1015)

## Version 0.7.4 (2020-04-14)

-   Add missing header files to distribution

## Version 0.7.3 (2020-04-09)

-   Add missing test data to distribution

## Version 0.7.2 (2020-03-24)

-   Fix several memory access bugs in parsers (reported by Robert Scott)

## Version 0.7.1 (2019-05-09)

-   Fix 16-bit RGB/RGBA TIFF write (patch by Tomi Aarnio)

## Version 0.7.0 (2018-09-30)

-   Add support for reading ImageJ ROIs

## Version 0.6.1 (2018-02-15)

-   Support pathlib paths as function arguments
-   Fix 16 bit PNG write support (patch by Tomi Aarnio)

## Version 0.6 (2016-09-21)

-   Add [supports_format]{.title-ref} function
-   Make png compression level tunable when calling imsave
-   Add imsave_multi
-   Add partial support for reading PNG files in Gray+alpha format

## Version 0.5.1 (2014-11-06)

-   Improve tests to work after installation
-   Fix compilation in MSVC (patch by Christoph Gohlke)

## Version 0.5 (2014-10-16)

-   Add magic-number based format auto-detection
-   Auto detect whether webp is installed
-   Fix WebP reading (update to newer API)

## Version 0.4 (2014-07-21)

-   Add configuration for TIFF saving
-   Correctly save 16 bit PNG images
-   Better error messages for JPEG

## Version 0.3.2 (2013-10-06)

-   Added imload\*/imwrite synonyms as suggested by Thouis (Ray) Jones
-   Options framework
-   Allow user to specify JPEG quality when saving
-   Fix loading of 16 bit PNG images

## Version 0.3.1 (2013-06-20)

-   Fix possible crash on error with TIFF
-   Fix compilation on Windows (reported by Volker Hilsenstein)
-   Make it easy to compile without WebP

## Version 0.3.0 (2013-07-29)

-   Support for reading from in-memory blobs
-   Support for reading & writing TIFF metadata
-   Add PHOTOMETRIC tag to TIFF (reported by Volker Hilsenstein)
-   Support writing RGB TIFFs

## Version 0.2.6 (2013-06-19)

-   Fix hard crash when saving with non-existing file type
-   Fix compilation on MacOS (patch by Alexander Bohn)
-   Add `verbose` argument to tests.run()
-   Better error when attempting to save floating point images

## Version 0.2.5 (2012-10-29)

-   Correctly accept uppercase extensions
-   Python 3 support (patch by Christoph Gohlke \[pull request 8 on
    github\])
-   Read 1-Bit PNGs
-   Read simple BMPs (compression and many bit types not supported)
-   More complete debug mode (export DEBUG=2 when building), more checks

## Version 0.2.4 (2012-06-26)

-   Add lzw.cpp to source distribution
-   Support saving 16-bit TIFF
-   Better Mac OS support (patch from Alexander Bohn)

## Version 0.2.3 (2012-06-8)

-   Fix imread_multi

## Version 0.2.2 (2012-06-5)

-   Add [formatstr]{.title-ref} argument to imread
-   Open files in binary mode on Windows (patch by Christoph Gohlke)
-   Read-only support for LSM files
-   Read-only support for XCF files (through [xcf2png]{.title-ref})
-   Fix writing of non-contiguous images (at least PNG was affected)

## Version 0.2.1 (2012-02-11)

-   Add missing files to distribution

## Version 0.2 (2012-03-19)

-   Compile on MSVC++ (Patches by Christoph Gohlke)
-   Support for WebP
-   Support for 1-bit TIFFs
-   Better error message
-   Support for multi-page TIFF reading
-   Experimental read-only support for STK files

## Version 0.1 (2012-02-28)

-   Support for PNG
-   Support for TIFF
-   Support for JPEG