How to work with HEIC image file types in Python

Question

The High Efficiency Image File (HEIF) format is the default when airdropping an image from an iPhone to a OSX device. I want to edit and modify these .HEIC files with Python.

Answer 1

You guys should check out this library, it's a Python 3 wrapper to the libheif library, it should serve your purpose of file conversion, extracting metadata:

https://github.com/david-poirier-csn/pyheif

https://pypi.org/project/pyheif/

Example usage:

 import whatimage
 import pyheif
 from PIL import Image


 def decodeImage(bytesIo):

    fmt = whatimage.identify_image(bytesIo)
    if fmt in ['heic', 'avif']:
         i = pyheif.read_heif(bytesIo)

         # Extract metadata etc
         for metadata in i.metadata or []:
             if metadata['type']=='Exif':
                 # do whatever

         # Convert to other file format like jpeg
         s = io.BytesIO()
         pi = Image.frombytes(
                mode=i.mode, size=i.size, data=i.data)

         pi.save(s, format="jpeg")

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