Python Pillow - Cropping an Image

Cropping an image in Pillow (Python Imaging Library) involves selecting a specific region or subarea of an image and creating a new image from that region. This operation is useful for removing unwanted parts of an image and focusing on a particular subject or resizing an image to specific dimensions.

The Image module of the pillow library provides the crop() method to perform the crop operation on the images.

Cropping an Image using the crop() method

Cropping an image can be done by using the crop() method, which allows us to define a box specifying the coordinates of the left, upper, right and lower corners of the region that we want to retain and then it creates a new image with only that portion of the original image.

Here is the basic syntax for the crop() method in Pillow library −

PIL.Image.crop(box)

Where,

• box − A tuple specifying the coordinates of the cropping box in the format (left, upper, right, lower). These coordinates represent the left, upper, right and lower edges of the rectangular region we want to retain.

Example - Cropping an Image

In this example we are cropping the image by using the crop() method by passing the left, upper, right and lower corners of the image region that we want.

main.py

from PIL import Image

#Open an image
image = Image.open("Images/saved_image.jpg")

# Display the inaput image 
image.show()

#Define the coordinates for the region to be cropped (left, upper, right, lower)
left = 100  
upper = 50  
right = 300  
lower = 250 

#Crop the image using the coordinates
cropped_image = image.crop((left, upper, right, lower))

#Display the cropped image as a new file
cropped_image.show()

Output

The above code will generate the following output −

Input image:

Output image cropped image:

Example - Cropping a Specific Portion of an Image

Here this is another example of performing the crop operation of the specified portion of the input image using the crop() method.

main.py

from PIL import Image

#Open an image
image = Image.open("Images/yellow_car.jpg")

# Display the inaput image 
image.show()

#Define the coordinates for the region to be cropped (left, upper, right, lower)
left = 100  
upper = 100  
right = 300  
lower = 300 

#Crop the image using the coordinates
cropped_image = image.crop((left, upper, right, lower))

#Display the cropped image 
cropped_image.show()

Output

On executing the above code you will get the following output −

Input image:

Output cropped image: