How do I generate circular thumbnails with PIL?

Question

How do I generate circular image thumbnails using PIL? The space outside the circle should be transparent.

Snippets would be highly appreciated, thank you in advance.

Tingle

Answer 1

The easiest way to do it is by using masks. Create a black and white mask with any shape you want. And use putalpha to put that shape as an alpha layer:

from PIL import Image, ImageOps

mask = Image.open('mask.png').convert('L')
im = Image.open('image.png')

output = ImageOps.fit(im, mask.size, centering=(0.5, 0.5))
output.putalpha(mask)

output.save('output.png')

Here is the mask I used:

---

If you want the thumbnail size to be variable you can use ImageDraw and draw the mask:

from PIL import Image, ImageOps, ImageDraw

size = (128, 128)
mask = Image.new('L', size, 0)
draw = ImageDraw.Draw(mask) 
draw.ellipse((0, 0) + size, fill=255)

im = Image.open('image.jpg')

output = ImageOps.fit(im, mask.size, centering=(0.5, 0.5))
output.putalpha(mask)

output.save('output.png')

---

If you want the output in GIF then you need to use the paste function instead of putalpha:

from PIL import Image, ImageOps, ImageDraw

size = (128, 128)
mask = Image.new('L', size, 255)
draw = ImageDraw.Draw(mask)
draw.ellipse((0, 0) + size, fill=0)

im = Image.open('image.jpg')

output = ImageOps.fit(im, mask.size, centering=(0.5, 0.5))
output.paste(0, mask=mask)
output.convert('P', palette=Image.ADAPTIVE)

output.save('output.gif', transparency=0)

Note that I did the following changes:

• The mask is now inverted. The white was replaced with black and vice versa.
• I'm converting into 'P' with an 'adaptive' palette. Otherwise, PIL will only use web-safe colors and the result will look bad.
• I'm adding transparency info to the image.

Please note: There is a big issue with this approach. If the GIF image contained black parts, all of them will become transparent as well. You can work around this by choosing another color for the transparency. I would strongly advise you to use PNG format for this. But if you can't then that is the best you could do.

Greenheart

Great! And how about outputting gif instead of png? I guess gif doesn't handle alpha, does it? – Tingle

Gif doesn't support alpha channel transparency. It only support setting one color as transparent. However, I made the necessary adjustment to output the result in gif. – Greenheart

great answer. while i can apply this technique easily to saved images I ran into an issue applying the mask within python. any chance you could take a look at this question: #20151052 – Wiser

For anyone looking for a mask, search 'circle mask png' on google images,a white circle on a black background. – Rabbinate

Answer 2

I would like to add to the already accepted answer a solution to antialias the resulting circle, the trick is to produce a bigger mask and then scale it down using an ANTIALIAS filter: here is the code

from PIL import Image, ImageOps, ImageDraw

im = Image.open('image.jpg')
bigsize = (im.size[0] * 3, im.size[1] * 3)
mask = Image.new('L', bigsize, 0)
draw = ImageDraw.Draw(mask) 
draw.ellipse((0, 0) + bigsize, fill=255)
mask = mask.resize(im.size, Image.ANTIALIAS)
im.putalpha(mask)

this produces a far better result in my opinion.

Wroughtup

Dude, the ANTIALIAS made a huge difference! Thanks! =D – Communistic

This worked for me so well. No need to design a mask. – Anserine

Best tip ever!! – Unglue

This does not work if the image already has transparency inside the circle – Lund

For later versions of PIL, use keyword argument resample=Image.ANTIALIAS. – Arv

Answer 3

Slight modification on @DRC's solution to also support images which already have transparency. He sets the alpha channel to 0 (invisible) outside the circle and to 255 inside (opaque), so I use darker which takes the min of the mask and the original alpha channel (which can be anywhere betwen 0-255) :-)

from PIL import Image, ImageChops, ImageDraw

def crop_to_circle(im):
    bigsize = (im.size[0] * 3, im.size[1] * 3)
    mask = Image.new('L', bigsize, 0)
    ImageDraw.Draw(mask).ellipse((0, 0) + bigsize, fill=255)
    mask = mask.resize(im.size, Image.ANTIALIAS)
    mask = ImageChops.darker(mask, im.split()[-1])
    im.putalpha(mask)

im = Image.open('0.png').convert('RGBA')
crop_to_circle(im)
im.save('cropped.png')

Lund

Or just use Image.paste() and add a mask – Whipple

Answer 4

Thank you very much. I was looking for hours and your idea does the trick.

Together with this other script from there. PIL round edges and add border it works perfectly for me.

from PIL import Image
from PIL import ImageDraw, ImageChops

def add_corners( im, rad=100):
    circle = Image.new('L', (rad * 2, rad * 2), 0)
    draw = ImageDraw.Draw(circle)
    draw.ellipse((0, 0, rad * 2, rad * 2), fill=255)
    alpha = Image.new('L', im.size, "white")
    w, h = im.size
    alpha.paste(circle.crop((0, 0, rad, rad)), (0, 0))
    alpha.paste(circle.crop((0, rad, rad, rad * 2)), (0, h - rad))
    alpha.paste(circle.crop((rad, 0, rad * 2, rad)), (w - rad, 0))
    alpha.paste(circle.crop((rad, rad, rad * 2, rad * 2)), (w - rad, h - rad))

    alpha = ImageChops.darker(alpha, im.split()[-1])

    im.putalpha(alpha)
    return im

im = Image.open ('AceOfSpades.png').convert('RGBA')

im = add_corners (im, 24)

im.show()
im.save("perfect.png")

Name this image AceOfSpades.png for testing

Tabber

Answer 5

from PIL import Image, ImageDraw, ImageFont
import requests
import io

# get a random image 
image_response = requests.get('https://source.unsplash.com/random/300x200')
image = Image.open(io.BytesIO(image_response.content))

# decorate the image
padding = 80
border_radius = 15
# get container size
container_size = (image.width + padding, image.height + padding *3)
# create a new image
container = Image.new('RGBA', container_size, (0, 0, 0, 0))

# create a draw object
draw = ImageDraw.Draw(container)
# draw a rounded rectangle
draw.rounded_rectangle((0, 0 ) + container_size, radius=border_radius, fill="green", outline=(0, 0, 0, 0))

# paste image in container at the center
container_width, container_height = container.size
image_width, image_height = image.size
x = (container_width - image_width) // 2
y = 30  # or any desired y-coordinate
container.paste(image,(x,y)) 

# add text
draw = ImageDraw.Draw(container)
text = "This is your #7 drive with RHA."
font = ImageFont.truetype("arial.ttf", 15)
# get text box size
text_box  = draw.textbbox((0, 0), text, font=font)
text_width, text_height = (text_box[2] - text_box[0]), (text_box[3] - text_box[1])
text_position = ((container.width - text_width) / 2, image.height + padding*2)
draw.text(text_position, text, font=font, fill="white", align='center')


# save the image
container.save('rounded_rect.png')

Utilize