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

Question

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

Answer 1

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.

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

#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)