How to convert Matplotlib figure to PIL Image object (without saving image)

EDIT # 2

PIL.Image.frombytes('RGB', 
fig.canvas.get_width_height(),fig.canvas.tostring_rgb())

takes around 2ms compared to the 35/40ms of the below.

This is the fastest way I can find so far.

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I've been looking at this also today.

In the matplotlib docs the savefig function had this.

pil_kwargsdict, optional Additional keyword arguments that are passed to PIL.Image.save when saving the figure. Only applicable for formats that are saved using Pillow, i.e. JPEG, TIFF, and (if the keyword is set to a non-None value) PNG.

This must mean it's already a pil image before saving but I can't see it.

You could follow this

Matplotlib: save plot to numpy array

To get it into a numpy array and then do

PIL.Image.fromarray(array)

You might need to reverse the channels from BGR TO RGB with array [:, :, ::-1]

EDIT:

I've tested each way come up with so far.

import io
    
def save_plot_and_get():
    fig.savefig("test.jpg")
    img = cv2.imread("test.jpg")
    return PIL.Image.fromarray(img)
    
def buffer_plot_and_get():
    buf = io.BytesIO()
    fig.savefig(buf)
    buf.seek(0)
    return PIL.Image.open(buf)
    
def from_canvas():
    lst = list(fig.canvas.get_width_height())
    lst.append(3)
    return PIL.Image.fromarray(np.fromstring(fig.canvas.tostring_rgb(),dtype=np.uint8).reshape(lst))

Results

%timeit save_plot_and_get()

35.5 ms ± 148 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10 loops each)

%timeit save_plot_and_get()

35.5 ms ± 142 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10 loops each)

%timeit buffer_plot_and_get()

40.4 ms ± 152 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10 loops each)

I flagged it as a duplicate and then closed it because I used the wrong link.

Anyway the answer may be here:

how to save a pylab figure into in-memory file which can be read into PIL image?

I use the following function:

def fig2img(fig):
    """Convert a Matplotlib figure to a PIL Image and return it"""
    import io
    buf = io.BytesIO()
    fig.savefig(buf)
    buf.seek(0)
    img = Image.open(buf)
    return img

Example usage:

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from PIL import Image

x = np.arange(-3,3)
plt.plot(x)
fig = plt.gcf()

img = fig2img(fig)

img.show()