Matplotlib rotate image file by X degrees

Question

How can I rotate an image file and plot it in matplotlib?

I know I can open it using PIL and rotate it, but this seems way too much for this simple function, that I\

Answer 1

You could use rotate from scipy.ndimage:

import scipy.misc
from scipy import ndimage
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

img = scipy.misc.lena()  
# img = scipy.misc.face()  # lena is not included in scipy 0.19.1
plt.figure(figsize=(12, 2))

for degree in range(5):
    plt.subplot(151+degree)
    rotated_img = ndimage.rotate(img, degree*60)
    plt.imshow(rotated_img, cmap=plt.cm.gray)
    plt.axis('off')

plt.show()

This rotates the image around the center (see docs).

Edit:

I you want some kind of animation (I don't how you're going to use the rotating image, so I can only speculate), maybe you're better off using some kind of game/graphics library, e.g. Pygame. Here you can rotate an image with some performance (thanks to the underlying SDL) by using pygame.transform.rotate and blitting that rotated image onto the screen.

Try this (using a picture lena.jpg) to get a smoothly rotating image:

import pygame

pygame.init()
screen = pygame.display.set_mode([400, 400])
pygame.display.set_caption('Rotating image example')
clock = pygame.time.Clock()

img = pygame.image.load('lena.jpg').convert()

img_rect = img.get_rect(center = screen.get_rect().center)
degree = 0

while degree < 360:
    for event in pygame.event.get():
        if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
            done = True

    # rotate image
    rot_img = pygame.transform.rotate(img, degree)
    img_rect = rot_img.get_rect(center = img_rect.center)

    # copy image to screen
    screen.fill((0, 0, 0))
    screen.blit(rot_img, img_rect)
    pygame.display.flip()

    clock.tick(60)
    degree += 1

pygame.quit()