Error: Could not find a format to read the specified file in mode 'i'

[ahemberger]

Like it says on the tin:

I have an EXR generated by Houdini Karma, which I'm trying to read with colour:

img_data = colour.read_image(evaluation_image)

I get this error:

Error: Could not find a format to read the specified file in mode 'i'

I'm on Windows 10, in Houdini, which runs Python 3.7.4:

colour.utilities.describe_environment()

===============================================================================
*                                                                             *
*   Interpreter :                                                             *
*       python : 3.7.4 (1 file(s) copied., Feb 19 2022, 19:27:01) [MSC        *
*   v.1929 64 bit (AMD64)]                                                    *
*                                                                             *
*   colour-science.org :                                                      *
*       colour : 0.3.16                                                       *
*                                                                             *
*   Runtime :                                                                 *
*       imageio : 2.6.1                                                       *
*       networkx : 2.6.3                                                      *
*       numpy : 1.19.5                                                        *
*       scipy : 1.7.3                                                         *
*       six : 1.13.0                                                          *
*                                                                             *
===============================================================================

I notice when I first launch Houdini and import colour, I see:

C:\Users\Allen\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python37\site-packages\colour\utilities\verbose.py:237: ColourUsageWarning: "OpenImageIO" related API features are not available, switching to "Imageio"!

though I'm unsure this is related. I'm curious if anyone might have some hints how best to troubleshoot? This seemed to work totally fine on a macbook M1 with similar versions of everything.

[KelSolaar]

Hi @ahemberger,

The issue is that Houdini does not have the freeimage backend, you can try the following in Houdini's Python interpreter:

import imageio
imageio.plugins.freeimage.download()