How do you convert a PIL `Image` to a Django `File`?

I'm trying to convert an UploadedFile to a PIL Image object to thumbnail it, and then convert the PIL Image object that my thumbnail function returns back into a File object. How can I do this?

The way to do this without having to write back to the filesystem, and then bring the file back into memory via an open call, is to make use of StringIO and Django InMemoryUploadedFile. Here is a quick sample on how you might do this. This assumes that you already have a thumbnailed image named 'thumb':

import StringIO

from django.core.files.uploadedfile import InMemoryUploadedFile

# Create a file-like object to write thumb data (thumb data previously created
# using PIL, and stored in variable 'thumb')
thumb_io = StringIO.StringIO()
thumb.save(thumb_io, format='JPEG')

# Create a new Django file-like object to be used in models as ImageField using
# InMemoryUploadedFile.  If you look at the source in Django, a
# SimpleUploadedFile is essentially instantiated similarly to what is shown here
thumb_file = InMemoryUploadedFile(thumb_io, None, 'foo.jpg', 'image/jpeg',
                                  thumb_io.len, None)

# Once you have a Django file-like object, you may assign it to your ImageField
# and save.
...

Let me know if you need more clarification. I have this working in my project right now, uploading to S3 using django-storages. This took me the better part of a day to properly find the solution here.

I've had to do this in a few steps, imagejpeg() in php requires a similar process. Not to say theres no way to keep things in memory, but this method gives you a file reference to both the original image and thumb (usually a good idea in case you have to go back and change your thumb size).

1. save the file
2. open it from filesystem with PIL,
3. save to a temp directory with PIL,
4. then open as a Django file for this to work.

Model:

class YourModel(Model):
    img = models.ImageField(upload_to='photos')
    thumb = models.ImageField(upload_to='thumbs')

Usage:

#in upload code
uploaded = request.FILES['photo']
from django.core.files.base import ContentFile
file_content = ContentFile(uploaded.read())
new_file = YourModel() 
#1 - get it into the DB and file system so we know the real path
new_file.img.save(str(new_file.id) + '.jpg', file_content)
new_file.save()

from PIL import Image
import os.path

#2, open it from the location django stuck it
thumb = Image.open(new_file.img.path)
thumb.thumbnail(100, 100)

#make tmp filename based on id of the model
filename = str(new_file.id)

#3. save the thumbnail to a temp dir

temp_image = open(os.path.join('/tmp',filename), 'w')
thumb.save(temp_image, 'JPEG')

#4. read the temp file back into a File
from django.core.files import File
thumb_data = open(os.path.join('/tmp',filename), 'r')
thumb_file = File(thumb_data)

new_file.thumb.save(str(new_file.id) + '.jpg', thumb_file)

This is actual working example for python 3.5 and django 1.10

in views.py:

from io import BytesIO
from django.core.files.base import ContentFile
from django.core.files.uploadedfile import InMemoryUploadedFile

def pill(image_io):
    im = Image.open(image_io)
    ltrb_border = (0, 0, 0, 10)
    im_with_border = ImageOps.expand(im, border=ltrb_border, fill='white')

    buffer = BytesIO()
    im_with_border.save(fp=buffer, format='JPEG')
    buff_val = buffer.getvalue()
    return ContentFile(buff_val)

def save_img(request)
    if request.POST:
       new_record = AddNewRecordForm(request.POST, request.FILES)
       pillow_image = pill(request.FILES['image'])
       image_file = InMemoryUploadedFile(pillow_image, None, 'foo.jpg', 'image/jpeg', pillow_image.tell, None)
       request.FILES['image'] = image_file  # really need rewrite img in POST for success form validation
       new_record.image = request.FILES['image']
       new_record.save()
       return redirect(...)

Putting together comments and updates for Python 3+

from io import BytesIO
from django.core.files.base import ContentFile
import requests

# Read a file in

r = request.get(image_url)
image = r.content
scr = Image.open(BytesIO(image))

# Perform an image operation like resize:

width, height = scr.size
new_width = 320
new_height = int(new_width * height / width)
img = scr.resize((new_width, new_height))

# Get the Django file object

thumb_io = BytesIO()
img.save(thumb_io, format='JPEG')
photo_smaller = ContentFile(thumb_io.getvalue())

To complete for those who, like me, want to couple it with Django's FileSystemStorage: (What I do here is upload an image, resize it to 2 dimensions and save both files.

utils.py

def resize_and_save(file):
    size = 1024, 1024
    thumbnail_size = 300, 300
    uploaded_file_url = getURLforFile(file, size, MEDIA_ROOT)
    uploaded_thumbnail_url = getURLforFile(file, thumbnail_size, THUMBNAIL_ROOT)
    return [uploaded_file_url, uploaded_thumbnail_url]

def getURLforFile(file, size, location):
    img = Image.open(file)
    img.thumbnail(size, Image.ANTIALIAS)
    thumb_io = BytesIO()
    img.save(thumb_io, format='JPEG')
    thumb_file = InMemoryUploadedFile(thumb_io, None, file.name, 'image/jpeg', thumb_io.tell, None)
    fs = FileSystemStorage(location=location)
    filename = fs.save(file.name, thumb_file)
    return fs.url(filename)  

In views.py

if request.FILES:
        fl, thumbnail = resize_and_save(request.FILES['avatar'])
        #delete old profile picture before saving new one
        try:
            os.remove(BASE_DIR + user.userprofile.avatarURL)
        except Exception as e:
            pass         
        user.userprofile.avatarURL = fl
        user.userprofile.thumbnailURL = thumbnail
        user.userprofile.save()

Here is an app that can do that: django-smartfields

from django.db import models

from smartfields import fields
from smartfields.dependencies import FileDependency
from smartfields.processors import ImageProcessor

class ImageModel(models.Model):
    image = fields.ImageField(dependencies=[
        FileDependency(processor=ImageProcessor(
            scale={'max_width': 150, 'max_height': 150}))
    ])

Make sure to pass keep_orphans=True to the field, if you want to keep old files, otherwise they are cleaned up upon replacement.

For those using django-storages/-redux to store the image file on S3, here's the path I took (the example below creates a thumbnail of an existing image):

from PIL import Image
import StringIO
from django.core.files.storage import default_storage

try:
    # example 1: use a local file
    image = Image.open('my_image.jpg')
    # example 2: use a model's ImageField
    image = Image.open(my_model_instance.image_field)
    image.thumbnail((300, 200))
except IOError:
    pass  # handle exception

thumb_buffer = StringIO.StringIO()
image.save(thumb_buffer, format=image.format)
s3_thumb = default_storage.open('my_new_300x200_image.jpg', 'w')
s3_thumb.write(thumb_buffer.getvalue())
s3_thumb.close()