Remove transparency/alpha from any image using PIL

Question

How do I replace the alpha channel of any image (png, jpg, rgb, rbga) with specified background color? It must also work with images that do not have an alpha channel.

Answer 1

This can be done by checking if the image is transparent

def remove_transparency(im, bg_colour=(255, 255, 255)):

    # Only process if image has transparency (http://stackoverflow.com/a/1963146)
    if im.mode in ('RGBA', 'LA') or (im.mode == 'P' and 'transparency' in im.info):

        # Need to convert to RGBA if LA format due to a bug in PIL (http://stackoverflow.com/a/1963146)
        alpha = im.convert('RGBA').split()[-1]

        # Create a new background image of our matt color.
        # Must be RGBA because paste requires both images have the same format
        # (http://stackoverflow.com/a/8720632  and  http://stackoverflow.com/a/9459208)
        bg = Image.new("RGBA", im.size, bg_colour + (255,))
        bg.paste(im, mask=alpha)
        return bg

    else:
        return im