You need to crop the image properly before resizing it. The basic idea is to determine the largest rectangular area of the source image having the same aspect (width to height) ratio as the thumbnail image and then trim off (crop) any excess around it before resizing to the thumbnail's dimensions). Here's a function which will compute the size and location of such a cropping area:
def cropbbox(imagewidth,imageheight, thumbwidth,thumbheight):
""" cropbbox(imagewidth,imageheight, thumbwidth,thumbheight)
Compute a centered image crop area for making thumbnail images.
imagewidth,imageheight are source image dimensions
thumbwidth,thumbheight are thumbnail image dimensions
Returns bounding box pixel coordinates of the cropping area
in this order (left,upper, right,lower).
"""
# determine scale factor
fx = float(imagewidth)/thumbwidth
fy = float(imageheight)/thumbheight
f = fx if fx < fy else fy
# calculate size of crop area
cropheight,cropwidth = int(thumbheight*f),int(thumbwidth*f)
# for centering use half the size difference of the image and the crop area
dx = (imagewidth-cropwidth)/2
dy = (imageheight-cropheight)/2
# return bounding box of centered crop area on source image
return dx,dy, cropwidth+dx,cropheight+dy
if __name__=='__main__':
print("===")
bbox = cropbbox(1024,768, 128,128)
print("cropbbox(1024,768, 128,128): {}".format(bbox))
print("===")
bbox = cropbbox(768,1024, 128,128)
print("cropbbox(768,1024, 128,128): {}".format(bbox))
print("===")
bbox = cropbbox(1024,1024, 96,128)
print("cropbbox(1024,1024, 96,128): {}".format(bbox))
print("===")
bbox = cropbbox(1024,1024, 128,96)
print("cropbbox(1024,1024, 128,96): {}".format(bbox))
After determining the crop area, call im.crop(bbox)
and then call im.thumbnail(...)
on the image returned.