code: def load_image_file(file, mode='RGB'):
      
      im = PIL.Image.open(file)
      if mode:
          im = im.convert(mode)
      return np.array(im)
docs: Loads an image file (.jpg, .png, etc) into a numpy array
  
      :param file: image file name or file object to load
      :param mode: format to convert the image to. Only 'RGB' (8-bit RGB, 3 channels) and 'L' (black and white) are supported.
      :return: image contents as numpy array