text: # 
  #   Plasma
  #   Copyright (c) 2020 Homedeck, LLC.
  #
  
  from pathlib import Path
  from PIL import Image
  from typing import List
  
  def imread (*image_paths: str) -> Image.Image:
      """
      Load one or more raster images.
  
      Parameters:
          image_paths (str | list): Path(s) to image to be loaded.
  
      Returns:
          PIL.Image | list: Loaded image(s).
      """
      # Check
      if len(image_paths) == 0:
          return None
      # Load
      images = []
      for image_path in image_paths:
          image = Image.open(image_path)
          image = image.convert(mode="RGB") if image.mode != "RGB" else image
          images.append(image)
      # Return
      return images if len(images) > 1 else images[0]
  
  def is_raster_format (image_path: str) -> bool:
      """
      Is the file at the provided path a raster image?
  
      Parameters:
          image_path (str): Path to file.
  
      Returns:
          bool: Whether the file is a raster image.
      """
      RASTER_FORMATS = [".jpg", ".jpeg", ".tif", ".tiff"]
      format = Path(image_path).suffix.lower()
      return format in RASTER_FORMATS