Convert image to a matrix in python

Question

I want to do some image processing using Python.

Is there a simple way to import .png image as a matrix of greyscale/RGB values (possibly using PIL)?

Answer 1

scipy.misc.imread() will return a Numpy array, which is handy for lots of things.

Answer 2

Up till now no one told about matplotlib.image:

import matplotlib.image as img image = img.imread(file_name) 

Now the image would be a 3D numpy array

print image.shape 

Would be something like: (317, 504, 3)