Installation¶

Warnings¶

Pillow and PIL cannot co-exist in the same environment. Before installing Pillow, please uninstall PIL.

Pillow >= 1.0 no longer supports “import Image”. Please use “from PIL import Image” instead.

Pillow >= 2.1.0 no longer supports “import _imaging”. Please use “from PIL.Image import core as _imaging” instead.

Notes¶

Pillow = 2.0.0 supports Python versions 2.6, 2.7, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4

Basic Installation¶

The following instructions will install Pillow with support for most common image formats. See External Libraries for a full list of external libraries supported.

Install Pillow with pip:

Or use easy_install for installing Python Eggs as pip does not support them:

Or download and extract the compressed archive from PyPI and inside it run:

External Libraries¶

You do not need to install all external libraries supported to use Pillow’s basic features.

Many of Pillow’s features require external libraries:

• libjpeg provides JPEG functionality.
  • Pillow has been tested with libjpeg versions 6b, 8, and 9 and libjpeg-turbo version 8.
  • Starting with Pillow 3.0.0, libjpeg is required by default, but may be disabled with the —disable-jpeg flag.
• zlib provides access to compressed PNGs
  • Starting with Pillow 3.0.0, zlib is required by default, but may be disabled with the —disable-zlib flag.
• libtiff provides compressed TIFF functionality
  • Pillow has been tested with libtiff versions 3.x and 4.0
• libfreetype provides type related services
• littlecms provides color management
  • Pillow version 2.2.1 and below uses liblcms1, Pillow 2.3.0 and above uses liblcms2. Tested with 1.19 and 2.2.
• libwebp provides the WebP format.
  • Pillow has been tested with version 0.1.3, which does not read transparent WebP files. Versions 0.3.0 and 0.4.0 support transparency.
• tcl/tk provides support for tkinter bitmap and photo images.
• openjpeg provides JPEG 2000 functionality.
  • Pillow has been tested with openjpeg 2.0.0 and 2.1.0.

Once you have installed the prerequisites,run:

If the prerequisites are installed in the standard library locations for your machine (e.g. /usr or /usr/local ), no additional configuration should be required. If they are installed in a non-standard location, you may need to configure setuptools to use those locations by editing setup.py or setup.cfg , or by adding environment variables on the command line:

Build Options¶

• Environment Variable: MAX_CONCURRENCY=n . By default, Pillow will use multiprocessing to build the extension on all available CPUs, but not more than 4. Setting MAX_CONCURRENCY to 1 will disable parallel building.
• Build flags: —disable-zlib , —disable-jpeg , —disable-tiff , —disable-freetype , —disable-tcl , —disable-tk , —disable-lcms , —disable-webp , —disable-webpmux , —disable-jpeg2000 . Disable building the corresponding feature even if the development libraries are present on the building machine.
• Build flags: —enable-zlib , —enable-jpeg , —enable-tiff , —enable-freetype , —enable-tcl , —enable-tk , —enable-lcms , —enable-webp , —enable-webpmux , —enable-jpeg2000 . Require that the corresponding feature is built. The build will raise an exception if the libraries are not found. Webpmux (WebP metadata) relies on WebP support. Tcl and Tk also must be used together.

OS X Installation¶

We provide binaries for OS X in the form of Python Wheels. Alternatively you can compile Pillow from soure with XCode.

The easiest way to install external libraries is via Homebrew. After you install Homebrew, run:

Install Pillow with:

Windows Installation¶

We provide binaries for Windows in the form of Python Eggs and Python Wheels:

Python Eggs¶

pip does not support Python Eggs; use easy_install instead.

Python Wheels¶

Requires setuptools >=0.8 and pip >=1.4.1. Some older versions of pip required the —use-wheel flag.

If the above does not work, it’s likely because we haven’t uploaded a wheel for the latest version of Pillow. In that case, try pinning it to a specific version:

FreeBSD Installation¶

Only FreeBSD 10 tested

Make sure you have Python’s development libraries installed.:

Or for Python 3:

Prerequisites are installed on FreeBSD 10 with:

Linux Installation¶

Most major Linux distributions, including Fedora, Debian/Ubuntu and ArchLinux include Pillow in packages that previously contained PIL e.g. python-imaging . Please consider using native operating system packages first to avoid installation problems and/or missing library support later.

We do not provide binaries for Linux. If you didn’t build Python from source, make sure you have Python’s development libraries installed. In Debian or Ubuntu:

Or for Python 3:

In Fedora, the command is:

Prerequisites are installed on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS or Raspian Wheezy 7.0 with:

Prerequisites are installed on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS with:

Prerequisites are installed on Fedora 20 with:

Platform Support¶

Current platform support for Pillow. Binary distributions are contributed for each release on a volunteer basis, but the source should compile and run everywhere platform support is listed. In general, we aim to support all current versions of Linux, OS X, and Windows.

Contributors please test Pillow on your platform then update this document and send a pull request.

Operating system	Supported	Tested Python versions	Tested Pillow versions	Tested processors
Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite	Yes	2.7,3.3,3.4	2.8.1,2.9	x86-64
Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks	Yes	2.7,3.4	2.6.1	x86-64
Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion	Yes	2.6,2.7,3.2,3.3	x86-64
Redhat Linux 6	Yes	2.6	x86
CentOS 6.3	Yes	2.7,3.3	x86
Fedora 20	Yes	2.7,3.3	2.3.0	x86-64
Ubuntu Linux 10.04 LTS	Yes	2.6	2.3.0	x86,x86-64
Ubuntu Linux 12.04 LTS	Yes
Ubuntu Linux 14.04 LTS	Yes	2.7,3.2,3.3,3.4	2.3.0	x86
Raspian Wheezy	Yes	2.7,3.2	2.3.0	arm
Gentoo Linux	Yes	2.7,3.2	2.1.0	x86-64
FreeBSD 10	Yes	2.7,3.4	2.4,2.3.1	x86-64
Windows 7 Pro	Yes	2.7,3.2,3.3	2.2.1	x86-64
Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise	Yes	3.3	x86-64
Windows 8 Pro	Yes	2.6,2.7,3.2,3.3,3.4a3	2.2.0	x86,x86-64
Windows 8.1 Pro	Yes	2.6,2.7,3.2,3.3,3.4	2.3.0, 2.4.0	x86,x86-64

Old Versions¶

You can download old distributions from PyPI. Only the latest 1.x and 2.x releases are visible, but all releases are available by direct URL access e.g. https://pypi.python.org/pypi/Pillow/1.0.

© Copyright 1995-2015, Fredrik Lundh and Contributors, Alex Clark and Contributors. Revision 7729d889 .

Installation¶

Warnings¶

Pillow and PIL cannot co-exist in the same environment. Before installing Pillow, please uninstall PIL.

Pillow >= 1.0 no longer supports “import Image”. Please use “from PIL import Image” instead.

Pillow >= 2.1.0 no longer supports “import _imaging”. Please use “from PIL.Image import core as _imaging” instead.

Python Support¶

Pillow supports these Python versions.

Python

3.9

3.8

3.7

3.6

3.5

3.4

3.3

3.2

2.7

2.6

2.5

2.4

Pillow 6.2.1 — 6.2.2

Pillow External Libraries for a full list of external libraries supported.

Install Pillow with pip:

Windows Installation¶

We provide Pillow binaries for Windows compiled for the matrix of supported Pythons in both 32 and 64-bit versions in the wheel format. These binaries include support for all optional libraries except libimagequant and libxcb. Raqm support requires FriBiDi to be installed separately:

macOS Installation¶

We provide binaries for macOS for each of the supported Python versions in the wheel format. These include support for all optional libraries except libimagequant. Raqm support requires FriBiDi to be installed separately:

Linux Installation¶

We provide binaries for Linux for each of the supported Python versions in the manylinux wheel format. These include support for all optional libraries except libimagequant. Raqm support requires FriBiDi to be installed separately:

Most major Linux distributions, including Fedora, Ubuntu and ArchLinux also include Pillow in packages that previously contained PIL e.g. python-imaging . Debian splits it into two packages, python3-pil and python3-pil.imagetk .

FreeBSD Installation¶

Pillow can be installed on FreeBSD via the official Ports or Packages systems:

Ports:

Packages:

The Pillow FreeBSD port and packages are tested by the ports team with all supported FreeBSD versions.

Building From Source¶

External Libraries¶

You do not need to install all supported external libraries to use Pillow’s basic features. Zlib and libjpeg are required by default.

There are Dockerfiles in our Docker images repo to install the dependencies for some operating systems.

Many of Pillow’s features require external libraries:

libjpeg provides JPEG functionality.

Pillow has been tested with libjpeg versions 6b, 8, 9-9d and libjpeg-turbo version 8.

Starting with Pillow 3.0.0, libjpeg is required by default, but may be disabled with the —disable-jpeg flag.

zlib provides access to compressed PNGs

Starting with Pillow 3.0.0, zlib is required by default, but may be disabled with the —disable-zlib flag.

libtiff provides compressed TIFF functionality

Pillow has been tested with libtiff versions 3.x and 4.0-4.1

libfreetype provides type related services

littlecms provides color management

Pillow version 2.2.1 and below uses liblcms1, Pillow 2.3.0 and above uses liblcms2. Tested with 1.19 and 2.7-2.12.

libwebp provides the WebP format.

Pillow has been tested with version 0.1.3, which does not read transparent WebP files. Versions 0.3.0 and above support transparency.

tcl/tk provides support for tkinter bitmap and photo images.

openjpeg provides JPEG 2000 functionality.

Pillow has been tested with openjpeg 2.0.0, 2.1.0, 2.3.1 and 2.4.0.

Pillow does not support the earlier 1.5 series which ships with Debian Jessie.

libimagequant provides improved color quantization

Pillow has been tested with libimagequant 2.6-2.14.1

Libimagequant is licensed GPLv3, which is more restrictive than the Pillow license, therefore we will not be distributing binaries with libimagequant support enabled.

libraqm provides complex text layout support.

libraqm provides bidirectional text support (using FriBiDi), shaping (using HarfBuzz), and proper script itemization. As a result, Raqm can support most writing systems covered by Unicode.

libraqm depends on the following libraries: FreeType, HarfBuzz, FriBiDi, make sure that you install them before installing libraqm if not available as package in your system.

Setting text direction or font features is not supported without libraqm.

Pillow wheels since version 8.2.0 include a modified version of libraqm that loads libfribidi at runtime if it is installed. On Windows this requires compiling FriBiDi and installing fribidi.dll into a directory listed in the Dynamic-Link Library Search Order (Microsoft Docs) ( fribidi-0.dll or libfribidi-0.dll are also detected). See Build Options to see how to build this version.

Previous versions of Pillow (5.0.0 to 8.1.2) linked libraqm dynamically at runtime.

libxcb provides X11 screengrab support.

Once you have installed the prerequisites, run:

If the prerequisites are installed in the standard library locations for your machine (e.g. /usr or /usr/local ), no additional configuration should be required. If they are installed in a non-standard location, you may need to configure setuptools to use those locations by editing setup.py or setup.cfg , or by adding environment variables on the command line:

If Pillow has been previously built without the required prerequisites, it may be necessary to manually clear the pip cache or build without cache using the —no-cache-dir option to force a build with newly installed external libraries.

Build Options¶

Environment variable: MAX_CONCURRENCY=n . Pillow can use multiprocessing to build the extension. Setting MAX_CONCURRENCY sets the number of CPUs to use, or can disable parallel building by using a setting of 1. By default, it uses 4 CPUs, or if 4 are not available, as many as are present.

Build flags: —disable-zlib , —disable-jpeg , —disable-tiff , —disable-freetype , —disable-lcms , —disable-webp , —disable-webpmux , —disable-jpeg2000 , —disable-imagequant , —disable-xcb . Disable building the corresponding feature even if the development libraries are present on the building machine.

Build flags: —enable-zlib , —enable-jpeg , —enable-tiff , —enable-freetype , —enable-lcms , —enable-webp , —enable-webpmux , —enable-jpeg2000 , —enable-imagequant , —enable-xcb . Require that the corresponding feature is built. The build will raise an exception if the libraries are not found. Webpmux (WebP metadata) relies on WebP support. Tcl and Tk also must be used together.

Build flags: —vendor-raqm —vendor-fribidi These flags are used to compile a modified version of libraqm and a shim that dynamically loads libfribidi at runtime. These are used to compile the standard Pillow wheels. Compiling libraqm requires a C99-compliant compiler.

Build flag: —disable-platform-guessing . Skips all of the platform dependent guessing of include and library directories for automated build systems that configure the proper paths in the environment variables (e.g. Buildroot).

Build flag: —debug . Adds a debugging flag to the include and library search process to dump all paths searched for and found to stdout.