Read a base64 encoded image from memory using OpenCv python library

Question

I\'m working on an app that to do some facial recognition from a webcam stream. I get base64 encoded data uri\'s of the canvas and want to use it to do something like this:<

Answer 1

You can just use both cv2 and pillow like this:

import base64
from PIL import Image
import cv2
from StringIO import StringIO
import numpy as np

def readb64(base64_string):
    sbuf = StringIO()
    sbuf.write(base64.b64decode(base64_string))
    pimg = Image.open(sbuf)
    return cv2.cvtColor(np.array(pimg), cv2.COLOR_RGB2BGR)

cvimg = readb64('R0lGODlhEAAQAMQAAORHHOVSKudfOulrSOp3WOyDZu6QdvCchPGolfO0o/XBs/fNwfjZ0frl3/zy7////wAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACH5BAkAABAALAAAAAAQABAAAAVVICSOZGlCQAosJ6mu7fiyZeKqNKToQGDsM8hBADgUXoGAiqhSvp5QAnQKGIgUhwFUYLCVDFCrKUE1lBavAViFIDlTImbKC5Gm2hB0SlBCBMQiB0UjIQA7')
cv2.imshow(cvimg)

Answer 2

This worked for me, and doesn't require PIL/pillow or any other dependencies (except cv2):

import cv2
import numpy as np

def data_uri_to_cv2_img(uri):
    encoded_data = uri.split(',')[1]
    nparr = np.fromstring(encoded_data.decode('base64'), np.uint8)
    img = cv2.imdecode(nparr, cv2.IMREAD_COLOR)
    return img

data_uri = "data:image/jpeg;base64,/9j/4AAQ..."
img = data_uri_to_cv2_img(data_uri)
cv2.imshow(img)

Answer 3

This is my solution for python 3.7 and without using PIL

import base64

def readb64(uri):
   encoded_data = uri.split(',')[1]
   nparr = np.fromstring(base64.b64decode(encoded_data), np.uint8)
   img = cv2.imdecode(nparr, cv2.IMREAD_COLOR)
   return img

i hope that this solutions works for all