matplotlib - How to plot remote image (from http url)

Question

This must be easy, but I can't figure how right now without using urllib module and manually fetching remote file

I want to overlay plot with remote image (let's say "http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/_static/logo2.png"), and neither imshow() nor imread() can load the image.

Any ideas which function will allow loading remote image?

Answer 1

It is easy indeed:

import urllib2
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

# create a file-like object from the url
f = urllib2.urlopen("http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/_static/logo2.png")

# read the image file in a numpy array
a = plt.imread(f)
plt.imshow(a)
plt.show()