imghdr — Determine the type of an image

Source code: Lib/imghdr.py

Deprecated since version 3.11: The imghdr module is deprecated (see PEP 594 for details).

The imghdr module determines the type of image contained in a file or byte stream.

The imghdr module defines the following function:

imghdr.what(file, h=None)

Tests the image data contained in the file named by file, and returns a string describing the image type. If optional h is provided, the file argument is ignored and h is assumed to contain the byte stream to test.

Changed in version 3.6: Accepts a path-like object.

The following image types are recognized, as listed below with the return value from what():

Value

Image format

'rgb'

SGI ImgLib Files

'gif'

GIF 87a and 89a Files

'pbm'

Portable Bitmap Files

'pgm'

Portable Graymap Files

'ppm'

Portable Pixmap Files

'tiff'

TIFF Files

'rast'

Sun Raster Files

'xbm'

X Bitmap Files

'jpeg'

JPEG data in JFIF or Exif formats

'bmp'

BMP files

'png'

Portable Network Graphics

'webp'

WebP files

'exr'

OpenEXR Files

New in version 3.5: The exr and webp formats were added.

You can extend the list of file types imghdr can recognize by appending to this variable:

imghdr.tests

A list of functions performing the individual tests. Each function takes two arguments: the byte-stream and an open file-like object. When what() is called with a byte-stream, the file-like object will be None.

The test function should return a string describing the image type if the test succeeded, or None if it failed.

Example:

>>>
>>> import imghdr
>>> imghdr.what('bass.gif')
'gif'