For an image processing class, I am doing point operations on monochrome images. Pixels are uint8 [0,255].

numpy uint8 will wrap. For example, 235+30 = 9. I need the pixels to saturate (max=255) or truncate (min=0) instead of wrapping.

My solution uses int32 pixels for the point math then converts to uint8 to save the image.

Is this the best way? Or is there a faster way?

#!/usr/bin/python

import sys
import numpy as np
import Image

def to_uint8( data ) :
    # maximum pixel
    latch = np.zeros_like( data )
    latch[:] = 255
    # minimum pixel
    zeros = np.zeros_like( data )

    # unrolled to illustrate steps
    d = np.maximum( zeros, data )
    d = np.minimum( latch, d )

    # cast to uint8
    return np.asarray( d, dtype="uint8" )

infilename=sys.argv[1]
img = Image.open(infilename)
data32 = np.asarray( img, dtype="int32")
data32 += 30
data_u8 = to_uint8( data32 )
outimg = Image.fromarray( data_u8, "L" )
outimg.save( "out.png" )

Input image:
Riemann

Output image:
Output

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