python - PIL Best Way To Replace Color?

Question

I am trying to remove a certain color from my image however it's not working as well as I'd hoped. I tried to do the same thing as seen here Using PIL to make all white pixels transparent? however the image quality is a bit lossy so it leaves a little ghost of odd colored pixels around where what was removed. I tried doing something like change pixel if all three values are below 100 but because the image was poor quality the surrounding pixels weren't even black.

Does anyone know of a better way with PIL in Python to replace a color and anything surrounding it? This is probably the only sure fire way I can think of to remove the objects completely however I can't think of a way to do this.

The picture has a white background and text that is black. Let's just say I want to remove the text entirely from the image without leaving any artifacts behind.

Would really appreciate someone's help! Thanks

Answer 1

The best way to do it is to use the "color to alpha" algorithm used in Gimp to replace a color. It will work perfectly in your case. I reimplemented this algorithm using PIL for an open source python photo processor phatch. You can find the full implementation here. This a pure PIL implementation and it doesn't have other dependences. You can copy the function code and use it. Here is a sample using Gimp:

to

You can apply the color_to_alpha function on the image using black as the color. Then paste the image on a different background color to do the replacement.

By the way, this implementation uses the ImageMath module in PIL. It is much more efficient than accessing pixels using getdata.

EDIT: Here is the full code:

from PIL import Image, ImageMath

def difference1(source, color):
    """When source is bigger than color"""
    return (source - color) / (255.0 - color)

def difference2(source, color):
    """When color is bigger than source"""
    return (color - source) / color


def color_to_alpha(image, color=None):
    image = image.convert('RGBA')
    width, height = image.size

    color = map(float, color)
    img_bands = [band.convert("F") for band in image.split()]

    # Find the maximum difference rate between source and color. I had to use two
    # difference functions because ImageMath.eval only evaluates the expression
    # once.
    alpha = ImageMath.eval(
        """float(
            max(
                max(
                    max(
                        difference1(red_band, cred_band),

                        difference1(green_band, cgreen_band)
                    ),
                    difference1(blue_band, cblue_band)
                ),
                max(
                    max(
                        difference2(red_band, cred_band),
                        difference2(green_band, cgreen_band)
                    ),
                    difference2(blue_band, cblue_band)
                )
            )
        )""",
        difference1=difference1,
        difference2=difference2,
        red_band = img_bands[0],
        green_band = img_bands[1],
        blue_band = img_bands[2],
        cred_band = color[0],
        cgreen_band = color[1],
        cblue_band = color[2]
    )

    # Calculate the new image colors after the removal of the selected color
    new_bands = [
        ImageMath.eval(
            "convert((image - color) / alpha + color, 'L')",
            image = img_bands[i],
            color = color[i],
            alpha = alpha
        )
        for i in xrange(3)
    ]

    # Add the new alpha band
    new_bands.append(ImageMath.eval(
        "convert(alpha_band * alpha, 'L')",
        alpha = alpha,
        alpha_band = img_bands[3]
    ))

    return Image.merge('RGBA', new_bands)

image = color_to_alpha(image, (0, 0, 0, 255))
background = Image.new('RGB', image.size, (255, 255, 255))
background.paste(image.convert('RGB'), mask=image)