PIL Best Way To Replace Color?

The best way to do it is to use the "color to alpha" algorithm used in Gimp to replace a color. It will work perfectly in your case. I reimplemented this algorithm using PIL for an open source python photo processor phatch. You can find the full implementation here. This a pure PIL implementation and it doesn't have other dependences. You can copy the function code and use it. Here is a sample using Gimp:

to

You can apply the color_to_alpha function on the image using black as the color. Then paste the image on a different background color to do the replacement.

By the way, this implementation uses the ImageMath module in PIL. It is much more efficient than accessing pixels using getdata.

EDIT: Here is the full code:

from PIL import Image, ImageMath

def difference1(source, color):
    """When source is bigger than color"""
    return (source - color) / (255.0 - color)

def difference2(source, color):
    """When color is bigger than source"""
    return (color - source) / color


def color_to_alpha(image, color=None):
    image = image.convert('RGBA')
    width, height = image.size

    color = map(float, color)
    img_bands = [band.convert("F") for band in image.split()]

    # Find the maximum difference rate between source and color. I had to use two
    # difference functions because ImageMath.eval only evaluates the expression
    # once.
    alpha = ImageMath.eval(
        """float(
            max(
                max(
                    max(
                        difference1(red_band, cred_band),
                        difference1(green_band, cgreen_band)
                    ),
                    difference1(blue_band, cblue_band)
                ),
                max(
                    max(
                        difference2(red_band, cred_band),
                        difference2(green_band, cgreen_band)
                    ),
                    difference2(blue_band, cblue_band)
                )
            )
        )""",
        difference1=difference1,
        difference2=difference2,
        red_band = img_bands[0],
        green_band = img_bands[1],
        blue_band = img_bands[2],
        cred_band = color[0],
        cgreen_band = color[1],
        cblue_band = color[2]
    )

    # Calculate the new image colors after the removal of the selected color
    new_bands = [
        ImageMath.eval(
            "convert((image - color) / alpha + color, 'L')",
            image = img_bands[i],
            color = color[i],
            alpha = alpha
        )
        for i in xrange(3)
    ]

    # Add the new alpha band
    new_bands.append(ImageMath.eval(
        "convert(alpha_band * alpha, 'L')",
        alpha = alpha,
        alpha_band = img_bands[3]
    ))

    return Image.merge('RGBA', new_bands)

image = color_to_alpha(image, (0, 0, 0, 255))
background = Image.new('RGB', image.size, (255, 255, 255))
background.paste(image.convert('RGB'), mask=image)

#!/usr/bin/python
from PIL import Image
import sys

img = Image.open(sys.argv[1])
img = img.convert("RGBA")

pixdata = img.load()

# Clean the background noise, if color != white, then set to black.
# change with your color
for y in xrange(img.size[1]):
    for x in xrange(img.size[0]):
        if pixdata[x, y] == (255, 255, 255, 255):
            pixdata[x, y] = (0, 0, 0, 255)

Using numpy and PIL:

This loads the image into a numpy array of shape (W,H,3), where W is the width and H is the height. The third axis of the array represents the 3 color channels, R,G,B.

import Image
import numpy as np

orig_color = (255,255,255)
replacement_color = (0,0,0)
img = Image.open(filename).convert('RGB')
data = np.array(img)
data[(data == orig_color).all(axis = -1)] = replacement_color
img2 = Image.fromarray(data, mode='RGB')
img2.show()

---

Since orig_color is a tuple of length 3, and data has shape (W,H,3), NumPy broadcasts orig_color to an array of shape (W,H,3) to perform the comparison data == orig_color. The result in a boolean array of shape (W,H,3).

(data == orig_color).all(axis = -1) is a boolean array of shape (W,H) which is True wherever the RGB color in data is original_color.