extract image type

[NathanTech7713]

Hi there,

I was wondering if there is a way to get the image format from the pdf?

Take the below code for example:

import pdfplumber
pdf=pdfplumber.open("my_pdf.pdf")
image=pdf.images[0]

As it stands, you can currently do:
image_data=image["stream"].get_data()

But without knowing the type of that image, I don't see how you could save that to a separate file or display it?

relatedly, I'd love to be able to contribute to this image object as I think making it an object rather than a dictionary would make life so much easier.
For example instead of:
image["stream"].get_data()
simply have:
image.get_data()

I think I have the coding knowledge, but don't understand the contributing requirements that well.
thanks in advance.
Nathan

[jsvine]

Hi @NathanTech7713, and very interesting question — thanks for raising it! I don't spend much time working with images in PDFs, so I don't have great answers for this, but it's worth discussing/exploring.

But without knowing the type of that image, I don't see how you could save that to a separate file or display it?

It looks like pdfminer.six does have methods for obtaining an image file extension — see https://github.com/pdfminer/pdfminer.six/blob/c8cceb7c58deec9e647be6d3957e03442770bdd0/pdfminer/image.py#L140-L154. It would probably be possible to write a pdfplumber.utils method to do the same, as we are already extracting the necessary attributes (bits, colorspace, and stream)

relatedly, I'd love to be able to contribute to this image object as I think making it an object rather than a dictionary would make life so much easier.

It's important, for the rest of pdfplumber, that all extracted page objects are represented as simple dicts — at least under the library's current architecture. Instead, if you'd like to add image-specific functionality, I'd recommend adding a pdfplumber.utils method. Riffing on your example above:

def save_image(image, path):
  with open(path, "wb") as f:
    data = image["stream"].get_data()
    f.write(data)

I think I have the coding knowledge, but don't understand the contributing requirements that well.

Please see https://github.com/jsvine/pdfplumber/blob/stable/CONTRIBUTING.md

If you have questions that are not answered there, please let me know and I can try to answer them.