imgtools_m8

Python image processing package for converting, downscaling, and optionally upscaling images using Pillow. DNN-based super-resolution upscaling (via OpenCV) is available as an optional extra.

Installation

# Core install (Pillow + Pydantic + NumPy only)
pip install imgtools_m8 --upgrade

# With DNN upscaling support (adds opencv-contrib-python)
pip install "imgtools_m8[dnn]" --upgrade

# With CLI color output (adds colorama)
pip install "imgtools_m8[cli]" --upgrade

# Everything at once
pip install "imgtools_m8[dnn,cli]" --upgrade

# From GitHub
pip install "git+https://github.com/mano8/imgtools_m8" --upgrade

Dependencies

Quick start

from imgtools_m8.image_process import ImageProcessing

obj = ImageProcessing(
    conf={
        "source_path": "./tests/sources_test/recien_llegado.jpg",
        "output_path": "./output",
        "output_options": [
            {
                "formats": [
                    {
                        "ext": "JPEG",
                        "quality": 80,
                        "progressive": True,
                        "optimize": True,
                    },
                    {"ext": "WEBP", "quality": 70},
                    {"ext": "PNG"},
                ]
            }
        ],
    }
)
obj.run()

Usage

ImageProcessing is the main class. It accepts a conf dict validated by ImageProcessingSchema.

Configuration structure

conf = {
    # Required
    "source_path": "/path/to/image.jpg",  # or a directory
    "output_path": "/path/to/output/",
    # Optional
    "include_subdirs": False,  # scan subdirectories when source is a dir
    "flatten_output": False,  # write all outputs flat (no subdir mirror)
    # At least one of output_options or global_options is required
    "output_options": [...],  # per-size output rules (see below)
    "global_options": {...},  # fallback formats/byte-limit for all options
}

output_options entries

Each entry in output_options may specify:

image_size variants (mutually exclusive where noted)

Supported output formats

Example 1 — convert to multiple formats without resizing

from imgtools_m8.image_process import ImageProcessing

obj = ImageProcessing(
    conf={
        "source_path": "./tests/sources_test/recien_llegado.jpg",
        "output_path": "./output",
        "output_options": [
            {
                "formats": [
                    {
                        "ext": "JPEG",
                        "quality": 80,
                        "progressive": True,
                        "optimize": True,
                    },
                    {"ext": "WEBP", "quality": 70},
                    {"ext": "PNG"},
                ]
            }
        ],
    }
)
obj.run()

Example 2 — downscale to a fixed bounding box

The image is 340×216 px. With fixed_width=300, fixed_height=200, the wider constraint wins (width ratio = 300/340 ≈ 88 %; height ratio = 200/216 ≈ 93 %), so the output is 300×190 px.

from imgtools_m8.image_process import ImageProcessing

obj = ImageProcessing(
    conf={
        "source_path": "./tests/sources_test/recien_llegado.jpg",
        "output_path": "./output",
        "output_options": [
            {
                "image_size": {"fixed_width": 300, "fixed_height": 200},
                "formats": [
                    {
                        "ext": "JPEG",
                        "quality": 80,
                        "progressive": True,
                        "optimize": True,
                    }
                ],
            }
        ],
    }
)
obj.run()

Example 3 — upscale then downscale (DNN model)

Requires pip install imgtools_m8[dnn]. The EDSR model (included) is used automatically.

from imgtools_m8.image_process import ImageProcessing

obj = ImageProcessing(
    conf={
        "source_path": "./tests/sources_test/recien_llegado.jpg",
        "output_path": "./output",
        "output_options": [
            {
                "image_size": {"fixed_width": 1200},
                "allow_upscale": True,
                "formats": [
                    {
                        "ext": "JPEG",
                        "quality": 80,
                        "progressive": True,
                        "optimize": True,
                    }
                ],
            }
        ],
    }
)
obj.run()

Example 4 — process a whole directory with subdirectory mirroring

from imgtools_m8.image_process import ImageProcessing

obj = ImageProcessing(
    conf={
        "source_path": "./tests/sources_test/",
        "output_path": "./output",
        "include_subdirs": True,
        "output_options": [
            {
                "image_size": {"fixed_size": 800},
                "max_byte_size": 200_000,
                "formats": [{"ext": "WEBP", "quality": 85}],
            }
        ],
    }
)
obj.run()

Example 5 — multiprocessing batch with resource monitoring

from imgtools_m8.multiprocess import MultiProcessImage

obj = MultiProcessImage(
    conf={
        "source_path": "./tests/sources_test/",
        "output_path": "./output",
        "include_subdirs": True,
        "output_options": [
            {
                "image_size": {"fixed_width": 800},
                "formats": [{"ext": "WEBP", "quality": 80}],
            }
        ],
    },
    max_cpu_percent=75,
    user_cpu_percent=50,
    batch_size=32,
)
obj.run_multiple()

CLI

After installation, an imgtools command is available:

# Convert to WEBP at 80% quality (default when no --format is given)
imgtools --source ./images --output ./out

# Resize to 1920 px wide and save as JPEG + WEBP
imgtools --source ./images --output ./out --width 1920 --format jpg:95 --format webp:80

# Process subdirectories in parallel with 4 workers
imgtools --source ./images --output ./out --subdirs --workers 4

# Load a full conf dict from a JSON file
imgtools --source ./images --output ./out --config ./my_conf.json

# Enable debug logging
imgtools --source ./images --output ./out --debug

Install [cli] to get colored log output:

pip install "imgtools_m8[cli]"

Run imgtools --help for the full argument reference. The --workers flag switches from single-process (ImageProcessing) to multiprocess (MultiProcessImage); the worker count is clamped to cpu_count - 1 to avoid saturating the system.

In-memory API

Process images without any file I/O using process_image:

from imgtools_m8 import process_image

with open("photo.jpg", "rb") as f:
    src_bytes = f.read()

results = process_image(
    src_bytes,
    [{"image_size": {"fixed_width": 200}, "formats": [{"ext": "WEBP", "quality": 80}]}],
)

for r in results:
    print(r.name, r.width, r.height, r.size_bytes)
    # write r.data to a file or upload directly

process_image returns a list[VariantResult]; each result carries name, data (raw bytes), width, height, size_bytes, and format. No disk paths required.

Async / FastAPI usage

process_image is synchronous and CPU-bound (Pillow/OpenCV decode, resize, encode). Calling it directly from an async def route blocks the event loop for the whole encode, starving every other in-flight request. The async wrappers offload that work to a worker thread so the loop stays responsive:

from imgtools_m8 import process_image_async, process_images_async


@app.post("/resize")
async def resize(file: UploadFile):
    src_bytes = await file.read()
    results = await process_image_async(
        src_bytes,
        [
            {
                "image_size": {"fixed_width": 200},
                "formats": [{"ext": "WEBP", "quality": 80}],
            }
        ],
    )
    return {"variants": [r.name for r in results]}


@app.post("/resize-batch")
async def resize_batch(files: list[UploadFile]):
    sources = [await f.read() for f in files]
    # one list[VariantResult] per source, order preserved
    batches = await process_images_async(
        sources,
        [{"image_size": {"fixed_width": 64}, "formats": [{"ext": "JPEG"}]}],
    )
    return {"count": len(batches)}

A few things worth knowing:

• What async buys you: the image work is still CPU-bound. await process_image_async(...) does not make encoding asynchronous — it runs the existing synchronous pipeline in a worker thread so it no longer blocks the event loop. The execution location changed, not the work. Because Pillow/OpenCV release the GIL during encode/decode/resize, this also gives real parallelism for concurrent requests.

• Thread-pool behavior: the work runs on the event loop's default thread pool, which has a bounded worker count managed by the loop. process_images_async([...]) schedules every source via asyncio.gather, but the executor caps how many run at once — passing thousands of sources creates thousands of awaitables, not thousands of OS threads.

• Cancellation: cancelling the awaiting task does not stop image processing already running in a worker thread (standard asyncio.to_thread behavior).

• Heterogeneous options: process_images_async applies the same output_options to every source. For per-image differing options, compose asyncio.gather over process_image_async directly:

  import asyncio
  
  batches = await asyncio.gather(
      process_image_async(img1, opts1),
      process_image_async(img2, opts2),
  )
  

• Security boundary: these wrappers do not alter image validation, decoding, decompression-bomb protections, or upload-size controls. Input validation and request limits remain the caller's responsibility — see Pillow's Image.MAX_IMAGE_PIXELS and your framework's upload-size caps.

DNN upscaling note

When opencv-contrib-python is not installed, fixed_upscale falls back to PIL bicubic scaling. Install the [dnn] extra to enable DNN upscaling:

pip install "imgtools_m8[dnn]"

Models (DNN upscaling)

The EDSR .pb models are not bundled in the wheel (saves ~111 MB). After installing the [dnn] extra, fetch them once with:

imgtools download-models

Models are SHA256-verified and stored in the platform cache directory. To use a custom location, set IMGTOOLS_M8_MODELS_DIR to a directory that contains an opencv/ subdirectory with the .pb files. If the models are absent when upscaling is attempted, a ModelNotFoundError is raised with a reminder to run imgtools download-models.

Custom models in .pb format can be loaded by passing a model_conf dict to ImageProcessing:

obj = ImageProcessing(
    conf={...},
    model_conf={
        "path": "/path/to/model/directory",
        "model_name": "espcn",  # model prefix, e.g. espcn, edsr, lapsrn
        "scale": 4,  # fixed scale (omit for AUTO_SCALE)
    },
)

Docker (CUDA-accelerated DNN upscaling)

A Dockerfile is provided to build a CUDA-enabled image that compiles OpenCV from source with GPU support, enabling hardware-accelerated DNN upscaling.

Requirements: Docker + NVIDIA Container Toolkit.

# Build with defaults (CUDA 13.3 / Ubuntu 24.04 / OpenCV 4.13)
docker build -t imgtools_m8 .

# Target a specific GPU compute capability (much faster compile)
docker build --build-arg CUDA_ARCH_BIN=8.9 -t imgtools_m8 .

# Run with GPU access
docker run --gpus all imgtools_m8 --help

Find your GPU's compute capability at developer.nvidia.com/cuda-gpus: RTX 30xx → 8.6, RTX 40xx → 8.9, RTX 50xx → 10.0.

Build arguments (OPENCV_VERSION, CUDA_ARCH_BIN) are documented in .env.example. A docker-compose.yml for multi-volume GPU batch processing is in docker_compose/imgtools_dev/.

Input/Output Example

Input Image

The source file is 340×216 px.

Recien llegado by @Cezar yañez

License

This project is licensed under the Apache 2 License — see the LICENSE file for details.

Authors

• Eli Serra
• Pre-trained DNN models by Xavier Weber