Converting an OpenCV Image to Black and White

Question

How do you convert a grayscale OpenCV image to black and white? I see a similar question has already been asked, but I\'m using OpenCV 2.3, and the proposed solution no long

Answer 1

Step-by-step answer similar to the one you refer to, using the new cv2 Python bindings:

1. Read a grayscale image

import cv2
im_gray = cv2.imread('grayscale_image.png', cv2.IMREAD_GRAYSCALE)

2. Convert grayscale image to binary

(thresh, im_bw) = cv2.threshold(im_gray, 128, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY | cv2.THRESH_OTSU)

which determines the threshold automatically from the image using Otsu's method, or if you already know the threshold you can use:

thresh = 127
im_bw = cv2.threshold(im_gray, thresh, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY)[1]

3. Save to disk

cv2.imwrite('bw_image.png', im_bw)