Python parallelization for code to combine multiple images - image-processing

Question

I am new to Python and am trying to parallelize a program that I somehow pieced together from the internet. The program reads all image files (usually multiple series of images such as abc001,abc002...abc015 and xyz001,xyz002....xyz015) in a specific folder and then combines images in a specified range. Most times, the number of files exceeds 10000, and my latest case requires me to combine 24000 images. Could someone help me with:
Taking 2 sets of images from different directories. Currently I have to move these images into 1 directory and then work in said directory.
Reading only specified files. Currently my program reads all files, saves names in an array (I think it's an array. Could be a directory also) and then uses only the images required to combine. If I specify a range of files, it still checks against all files in the directory and takes a lot of time.
Parallel Processing - I work with usually 10k files or sometimes more. These are images saved from the fluid simulations that I run at specific times. Currently, I save about 2k files at a time in separate folders and run the program to combine these 2000 files at one time. And then I copy all the output files to a separate folder to keep them together. It would be great if I could use all 16 cores on the processor to combine all files in 1 go.
Image series 1 is like so.
Consider it to be a series of photos of the cat walking towards the camera. Each frame is is suffixed with 001,002,...,n.
Image series 1 is like so.
Consider it to be a series of photos of the cat's expression changing with each frame. Each frame is is suffixed with 001,002,...,n.
The code currently combines each frame from set1 and set2 to provide output.png as shown in the link here.
import sys
import os
from PIL import Image
keywords=input('Enter initial characters of image series 1 [Ex:Scalar_ , VoF_Scene_]:\n')
keywords2=input('Enter initial characters of image series 2 [Ex:Scalar_ , VoF_Scene_]:\n')
directory = input('Enter correct folder name where images are present :\n') # FOLDER WHERE IMAGES ARE LOCATED
result1 = {}
result2={}
name_count1=0
name_count2=0
for filename in os.listdir(directory):
if keywords in filename:
name_count1 +=1
result1[name_count1] = os.path.join(directory, filename)
if keywords2 in filename:
name_count2 +=1
result2[name_count2] = os.path.join(directory, filename)
num1=input('Enter initial number of series:\n')
num2=input('Enter final number of series:\n')
num1=int(num1)
num2=int(num2)
if name_count1==(num2-num1+1):
a1=1
a2=name_count1
elif name_count2==(num2-num1+1):
a1=1
a2=name_count2
else:
a1=num1
a2=num2+1
for x in range(a1,a2):
y=format(x,'05') # '05' signifies number of digits in the series of file name Ex: [Scalar_scene_1_00345.png --> 5 digits], [Temperature_section_2_951.jpg --> 3 digits]. Change accordingly
y=str(y)
for comparison_name1 in result1:
for comparison_name2 in result2:
test1=result1[comparison_name1]
test2=result2[comparison_name2]
if y in test1 and y in test2:
a=test1
b=test2
test=[a,b]
images = [Image.open(x) for x in test]
widths, heights = zip(*(i.size for i in images))
total_width = sum(widths)
max_height = max(heights)
new_im = Image.new('RGB', (total_width, max_height))
x_offset = 0
for im in images:
new_im.paste(im, (x_offset,0))
x_offset += im.size[0]
output_name='output'+y+'.png'
new_im.save(os.path.join(directory, output_name))

Answer 1

I did a Python version as well, it's not quite as fast but it is maybe closer to your heart :-)
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import cv2
import numpy as np
from multiprocessing import Pool
def doOne(params):
"""Append the two input images side-by-side to output the third."""
imA = cv2.imread(params[0], cv2.IMREAD_UNCHANGED)
imB = cv2.imread(params[1], cv2.IMREAD_UNCHANGED)
res = np.hstack((imA, imB))
cv2.imwrite(params[2], res)
if __name__ == '__main__':
# Build the list of jobs - each entry is a tuple with 2 input filenames and an output filename
jobList = []
for i in range(1000):
# Horizontally append a-XXXXX.png to b-XXXXX.png to make c-XXXXX.png
jobList.append( (f'a-{i:05d}.png', f'b-{i:05d}.png', f'c-{i:05d}.png') )
# Make a pool of processes - 1 per CPU core
with Pool() as pool:
# Map the list of jobs to the pool of processes
pool.map(doOne, jobList)

Answer 2

You can do this a little quicker with libvips. To join two images left-right, enter:
vips join left.png out.png result.png horizontal
To test, I made 200 pairs of 1200x800 PNGs like this:
for i in {1..200}; do cp x.png left$i.png; cp x.png right$i.png; done
Then tried a benchmark:
time parallel vips join left{}.png right{}.png result{}.png horizontal ::: {1..200}
real 0m42.662s
user 2m35.983s
sys 0m6.446s
With imagemagick on the same laptop I see:
time parallel convert left{}.png right{}.png +append result{}.png ::: {1..200}
real 0m55.088s
user 3m24.556s
sys 0m6.400s

Answer 3

You can do that much faster without Python, and using multi-processing with ImageMagick or libvips.
The first part is all setup:
Make 20 images, called a-000.png ... a-019.png that go from red to blue:
convert -size 64x64 xc:red xc:blue -morph 18 a-%03d.png
Make 20 images, called b-000.png ... b-019.png that go from yellow to magenta:
convert -size 64x64 xc:yellow xc:magenta -morph 18 b-%03d.png
Now append them side-by-side into c-000.png ... c-019.png
for ((f=0;f<20;f++))
do
z=$(printf "%03d" $f)
convert a-${z}.png b-${z}.png +append c-${z}.png
done
Those images look like this:
If that looks good, you can do them all in parallel with GNU Parallel:
parallel convert a-{}.png b-{}.png +append c-{}.png ::: {1..19}
Benchmark
I did a quick benchmark and made 20,000 images a-00000.png...a-019999.png and another 20,000 images b-00000.png...b-019999.png with each image 1200x800 pixels. Then I ran the following command to append each pair horizontally and write 20,000 output images c-00000.png...c-019999.png:
seq -f "%05g" 0 19999 | parallel --eta convert a-{}.png b-{}.png +append c-{}.png
and that takes 16 minutes on my MacBook Pro with all 12 CPU cores pegged at 100% throughout. Note that you can:
add spacers between the images,
write annotation onto the images,
add borders,
resize
if you wish and do lots of other processing - this is just a simple example.
Note also that you can get even quicker times - in the region of 10-12 minutes if you accept JPEG instead of PNG as the output format.