How to convert an image to black and white grayscale in Python

There’s something inherently majestic about black and white photos, something that keeps artists using it long after the advent of color photography. So that’s our goal, now how do we get there? For Python users, the answer is simpler than it’s ever been: we’ll use an API.

Let’s start things up by using pip install to import our image processing client.

pip install cloudmersive-image-api-client

Our next task is to create a function call for filter_black_and_white. Here’s what that can look like:

from __future__ import print_function
import time
import cloudmersive_image_api_client
from cloudmersive_image_api_client.rest import ApiException
from pprint import pprint
# Configure API key authorization: Apikey
configuration = cloudmersive_image_api_client.Configuration()
configuration.api_key['Apikey'] = 'YOUR_API_KEY'
# Uncomment below to setup prefix (e.g. Bearer) for API key, if needed
# configuration.api_key_prefix['Apikey'] = 'Bearer'
# create an instance of the API class
api_instance = cloudmersive_image_api_client.FilterApi(cloudmersive_image_api_client.ApiClient(configuration))
image_file = '/path/to/file' # file | Image file to perform the operation on.  Common file formats such as PNG, JPEG are supported.
try:
# Convert image to black-and-white grayscale
api_response = api_instance.filter_black_and_white(image_file)
pprint(api_response)
except ApiException as e:
print("Exception when calling FilterApi->filter_black_and_white: %s\n" % e)

And that’s about all there is to setting up our API. Let’s give it a quick test with the following image_file:

And now our returned image:

Nice!