Here is my take on doing a padded fit for an image:
#!/usr/bin/env python
from PIL import Image, ImageChops
F_IN = "/path/to/image_in.jpg"
F_OUT = "/path/to/image_out.jpg"
size = (80,80)
image = Image.open(F_IN)
image.thumbnail(size, Image.ANTIALIAS)
image_size = image.size
thumb = image.crop( (0, 0, size[0], size[1]) )
offset_x = max( (size[0] - image_size[0]) / 2, 0 )
offset_y = max( (size[1] - image_size[1]) / 2, 0 )
thumb = ImageChops.offset(thumb, offset_x, offset_y)
thumb.save(F_OUT)
It first uses the thumbnail operation to bring the image down to within your original bounds and preserving the aspect. Then it crops it back out to actually fill the size of your bounds (since unless the original image was square, it will be smaller now), and we find the proper offset to center the image. The image is offset to the center, so you end up with black padding but no image cropping.
Unless you can make a really sensible guess at a proper center crop without losing possible important image data on the edges, a padded fit approach will work better.
Update
Here is a version that can do either center crop or pad fit.
#!/usr/bin/env python
from PIL import Image, ImageChops, ImageOps
def makeThumb(f_in, f_out, size=(80,80), pad=False):
image = Image.open(f_in)
image.thumbnail(size, Image.ANTIALIAS)
image_size = image.size
if pad:
thumb = image.crop( (0, 0, size[0], size[1]) )
offset_x = max( (size[0] - image_size[0]) / 2, 0 )
offset_y = max( (size[1] - image_size[1]) / 2, 0 )
thumb = ImageChops.offset(thumb, offset_x, offset_y)
else:
thumb = ImageOps.fit(image, size, Image.ANTIALIAS, (0.5, 0.5))
thumb.save(f_out)
source = "/path/to/source/image.JPG"
makeThumb(source, "/path/to/source/image_padded.JPG", pad=True)
makeThumb(source, "/path/to/source/image_centerCropped.JPG", pad=False)