Image manipulation is a common task when dealing with digital images. Python provides various libraries for handling images, and one popular library is ImageIO. In this blog post, we will explore how to flip and mirror images using ImageIO in Python.

Installing ImageIO

Before we dive into image manipulation, let’s make sure ImageIO is installed in our Python environment. You can install it using pip by running the following command:

pip install imageio

Once installed, we can start using ImageIO to manipulate images.

Flipping Images

Flipping an image means reversing its horizontal or vertical orientation. In ImageIO, we can achieve this by using the flipud and fliplr functions.

To flip an image vertically, we can use the flipud function. Here’s an example code snippet that demonstrates how to do it:

import imageio

# Read the image
image = imageio.imread('path/to/image.jpg')

# Flip the image vertically
flipped_image = imageio.flipud(image)

# Save the flipped image
imageio.imwrite('path/to/flipped_image.jpg', flipped_image)

Similarly, to flip an image horizontally, we can use the fliplr function. Here’s an example:

import imageio

# Read the image
image = imageio.imread('path/to/image.jpg')

# Flip the image horizontally
flipped_image = imageio.fliplr(image)

# Save the flipped image
imageio.imwrite('path/to/flipped_image.jpg', flipped_image)

Mirroring Images

Mirroring an image involves creating a mirror image of the original image. We can achieve this in ImageIO by combining flipping and concatenation.

To mirror an image horizontally, we can flip it horizontally and then concatenate it with the original image. Here’s an example:

import imageio
import numpy as np

# Read the image
image = imageio.imread('path/to/image.jpg')

# Flip the image horizontally
flipped_image = imageio.fliplr(image)

# Concatenate the original image and flipped image horizontally
mirrored_image = np.concatenate((image, flipped_image), axis=1)

# Save the mirrored image
imageio.imwrite('path/to/mirrored_image.jpg', mirrored_image)

To mirror an image vertically, we can follow the same approach by flipping it vertically and then concatenating it with the original image vertically.

Conclusion

Image manipulation is a powerful technique that allows us to modify images according to our requirements. In this blog post, we explored how to flip and mirror images using ImageIO in Python.

ImageIO provides an easy and convenient way to perform these operations. By understanding the concepts and example code provided above, you can start manipulating images in your Python projects using ImageIO.