Loading images using the Keras API

In this recipe, we will learn how to load images using the Keras API, a very important task considering that, in computer vision, we'll always work with visual data. In particular, we'll learn how to open, explore, and visualize a single image, as well as a batch of them. Additionally, we will learn how to programmatically download a dataset.

Getting ready

Keras relies on the Pillow library to manipulate images. You can install it easily using pip:

$> pip install Pillow

Let's get started!

How to do it…

Now, let's begin this recipe:

1. Import the necessary packages:

   import glob
   import os
   import tarfile
   import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
   from tensorflow.keras.preprocessing.image import ImageDataGenerator
   from tensorflow.keras.preprocessing.image 
   import load_img, img_to_array
   from tensorflow.keras.utils import get_file

2. Define the URL and destination of the CINIC-10 dataset, an alternative to the famous...