Storing and Retrieving Images from Database using Python
image-manipulation, python
Solution
This StackOverflow Question is a good one to start with when figuring out whether to store images in a DB or on a filesystem
Storing Images in DB - Yea or Nay?
I have also written about the issues on my blog
http://www.atalasoft.com/cs/blogs/loufranco/archive/2007/12/03/images-in-databases-part-i-what-to-store.aspx
http://www.atalasoft.com/cs/blogs/loufranco/archive/2007/12/04/images-in-databases-part-ii-web-images-are-random-access.aspx
http://www.atalasoft.com/cs/blogs/loufranco/archive/2009/04/28/document-storage-database-blobs-or-the-filesystem.aspx
The short answer is: if the images are small and there aren't a lot of them -- a blob in the DB is probably fine (easier to backup, control access, transactions, etc). But the performance is bad compared to the filesystem -- it's a tradeoff. Most real applications (and especially big websites) use the filesystem, but it's perfectly reasonable to use blobs in some cases.
The blob (or file) is just going to be the encoded data (JPG) -- it's the exact same stream of bytes. In a web app, you would use an img tag -- if you are building a desktop GUI, look at what components it has for displaying images.
If you are using a blob, and need to display in a web app, the src of the img tag will be set to a script/view/etc that returns a content-type set to the mime-type of the image (e.g. image/jpeg) and the content of the blob.
Problem
I want to store the images related to a each person's profile in the DB and retrieve them when requested and save it as .jpg file - and display it to the users. How could I render the image data stored in the DB as an image and store it locally??