refimage

A Serializable Image Container

This crate provides a type-erased image container (GenericImage), backed by a contiguous slice (owned or referenced) of primitive (u8, u16, f32) pixels, with arbitrary color space (grayscale, Bayer pattern, RGB, ...) and color channels support (max. 255). Image sizes are limited to 65536 × 65536 for practical reasons.

GenericImage and GenericImageOwned are powerful, since it supports metadata in the form of (key, value) pairs, with optional comments. Valid metadata keys are case-insensitive, 80-character strings, and values are up to 64-bit integer types, 32- and 64-bit floating point numbers, strings up-to 4096 characters, or std::time::{SystemTime, Duration}.

GenericImage and GenericImageOwned also support serialization and deserialization, and, optionally can be saved in the open Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) format by enabling the optional fitsio feature. FITS files support lossless compression, and saving of arbitrary metadata.

GenericImage and GenericImageOwned are represented by the same underlying object after serialization, and can be deserialized as either type at the deserializer end.

The path to a GenericImage

A GenericImage can be obtained in a couple of ways. In the first case, the Rust program itself generates the image. In that case, a ImageData object is first created with the appropriate, contiguous, backing storage and image format:

use refimage::{ColorSpace, ImageData, Debayer, DemosaicMethod, DynamicImageData, GenericImage, GenericImageOwned};
use std::time::SystemTime;

let mut data = vec![0u8; 256]; // this is the backing store
// acquire(&mut data); // this function populates the backing store with the image pixels
let img = ImageData::from_mut_ref(&mut data, 16, 16, ColorSpace::Grbg).unwrap(); // Create a 4x4 image backed by the vector
let img = DynamicImageData::from(img); // convert the `ImageData` object to `DynamicImageData`
let img = img.debayer(DemosaicMethod::Nearest).expect("Could not debayer"); // debayer the image using nearest neighbor method
let mut img = GenericImage::new(SystemTime::now(), img); // Convert to a GenericImage
// insert the camera information as metadata
img.insert_key("CAMERA", ("Rust Test Program", "Name of the camera used to capture the image"));
let json = serde_json::to_string(&img).unwrap(); // serialize the image to JSON
let rimg: GenericImage = serde_json::from_str(&json).unwrap(); // deserialize to GenericImage
assert_eq!(&img, &rimg); // Confirm that deserialized image matches the original
let rimg: GenericImageOwned = rimg.into(); // convert to GenericImageOwned
let ownedjson = serde_json::to_string(&rimg).unwrap(); // serialize the image to JSON
assert_eq!(&json, &ownedjson); // the two representations should be identical

In the second case, an image can be loaded using the image crate from disk, by enabling the image feature:

use refimage::DynamicImageData;
use image::open;

let img = open("/path/to/image.png").expect("Could not load image");
let img = DynamicImageData::try_from(img).expect("Could not convert image");

Note, that the image being loaded must not contain an alpha channel for the conversion to be successful in the current implementation. However, the image crate provides methods to remove the alpha channel. A custom color space can be used for such an image, however, the user must keep track of the custom color space information.

Loading and storing a GenericImage

A GenericImage is intended to be loaded and stored in a standard format, e.g. bincode - which follows trivially from the serialization- deserialization of GenericImage. However, for more portable applications, with the fitsio feature, a GenericImage can be stored as a FITS file by importing the FitsWrite trait. The FITS file is stored using the fitsio crate, which is a thin wrapper around the cfitsio library.

use refimage::{FitsCompression, FitsWrite, GenericImage}; // we need the FitsWrite trait to be able to use the `write_fits` method.
use std::path::Path;
let img: GenericImage = { todo!() }; // obtain a GenericImage
img.write_fits(Path::new("/path/to/fitsimage.fit"), FitsCompression::None, true) // no compression, overwrite
    .expect("Could not write FITS file.");