0.10.x version, changes topic.

[bigcat88]

Here will be information about changes for 0.10 version.

Release date: NEXT WEEK (21.02-23.02)

Main features of 0.10.0 version:

• Removed CFFI bindings, added native C module, most parts of project were reworked.
• Support for encoding of LA & LA;16 modes.
• Ability to build project from source with LibHeif==1.12.0

pillow_heif.libheif_info() was simplified to such dictionary:

{
    'libheif': '1.14.2',
    'HEIF': 'x265 HEVC encoder (3.4+31-6722fce1f)',
    'AVIF': 'AOMedia Project AV1 Encoder 3.5.0'
}

Changes when using as a Pillow plugin:

• no breaking changes.
• in info dictionary metadata.content_type is now str instead of bytes.

Changes when using as a standalone:

• convert_to method removed, instead optional bgr_mode parameter to open_heif & read_heif added.

• open_heif/read_heif with convert_hdr_to_8bit=False will open 10/12 bit images in 16 bit mode automatically(and it faster now and takes less RAM during decoding).

  BGR modes(OpenCV) - old code:

  heif_file = pillow_heif.open_heif("images/rgb12.heif", convert_hdr_to_8bit=False)
  heif_file.convert_to("BGRA;16" if heif_file.has_alpha else "BGR;16")
  np_array = np.asarray(heif_file)
  cv2.imwrite("rgb16.png", np_array)

  ->

  heif_file = pillow_heif.open_heif("images/rgb12.heif", convert_hdr_to_8bit=False, bgr_mode=True)
  np_array = np.asarray(heif_file)
  cv2.imwrite("rgb16.png", np_array)

• original_bit_depth in info dictionary was renamed to bit_depth, standalone bit_depth was removed.

  heif_file = pillow_heif.open_heif("images/rgb12.heif")
  print("image bit depth:" , heif_file.bit_depth)

  ->

  heif_file = pillow_heif.open_heif("images/rgb12.heif")
  print("image bit depth:" , heif_file.info["bit_depth"])

  it is standardized now and shows the bit-depth of image in file(not the decoded one, so it may differs from bit depth of mode), for both Pillow plugin and stand-alone usage.

• thumbnails was simplified, temporary remove ability for getting their data and now it is just a list with thumbnails boxes.

  For both the Pillow plugin and standalone use, this list will be in the info dictionary. It simply allows you to delete thumbnails or add new ones without being able to retrieve their data. (I can’t make it universal for both modes, when there is an idea how to do it without loss of performance, I’ll do it)

• encode function added.

  def encode(mode: str, size: tuple, data, fp, **kwargs) -> None:
      """Encodes data in a ``fp``.
  
      :param mode: `BGR(A);16`, `RGB(A);16`, LA;16`, `L;16`, `I;16L`, `BGR(A)`, `RGB(A)`, `LA`, `L`
      :param size: tuple with ``width`` and ``height`` of an image.
      :param data: bytes object with raw image data.
      :param fp: A filename (string), pathlib.Path object or an object with ``write`` method."""

  Useful in situations where you want just save one image to a new file.
  Old code that do the same(it still will be worked):

  cv_img = cv2.imread("images/jpeg_gif_png/RGBA_16.png", cv2.IMREAD_UNCHANGED)
  heif_file = pillow_heif.from_bytes(
      mode="BGRA;16",
      size=(cv_img.shape[1], cv_img.shape[0]),
      data=bytes(cv_img)
  )
  heif_file.save("RGBA_10bit.heic", quality=-1)

  New alternative:

  cv_img = cv2.imread("images/jpeg_gif_png/RGBA_16.png", cv2.IMREAD_UNCHANGED)
  pillow_heif.encode(
     mode="BGRA;16",
     size=(cv_img.shape[1], cv_img.shape[0]),
     data=bytes(cv_img),
     fp="RGBA_10bit.heic",
     quality=-1)

  Both methods are faster now, as data passes directly to LibHeif(encode will be faster as it does not create HeifFile class).

[bigcat88]

The main and most important change to me, is that from this version info dictionaries are fully equal between Pillow version and open_heif version.
That's will make use and support of this project very simple.