Rahul Sharma (Editor)

Python Imaging Library

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Original author(s)
  
Fredrik Lundh

Written in
  
Python, C

Developer(s)
  
Secret Labs AB

Initial release
  
1995; 22 years ago (1995)

Stable release
  
1.1.7 / November 15, 2009; 7 years ago (2009-11-15)

Preview release
  
1.2a0 / 2011; 6 years ago (2011)

Python Imaging Library (abbreviated as PIL) (in newer versions known as Pillow) is a free library for the Python programming language that adds support for opening, manipulating, and saving many different image file formats. It is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. The latest version of PIL is 1.1.7, was released in September 2009 and supports Python 1.5.2–2.7, with Python 3 support to be released "later".

Contents

Development appears to be discontinued with the last commit to the PIL repository coming in 2011. Consequently, a successor project called Pillow has forked the PIL repository and added Python 3.x support. This fork has been adopted as a replacement for the original PIL in Linux distributions including Debian and Ubuntu (since 13.04).

Capabilities

Pillow offers several standard procedures for image manipulation. These include:

  • per-pixel manipulations,
  • masking and transparency handling,
  • image filtering, such as blurring, contouring, smoothing, or edge finding,
  • image enhancing, such as sharpening, adjusting brightness, contrast or color,
  • adding text to images and much more.
  • File formats

    Some of the file formats supported include PPM, PNG, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, and BMP. It is also possible to create new file decoders to expand the library of file formats accessible.

    Usage example

    This example loads an image from the hard drive and blurs it.

    References

    Python Imaging Library Wikipedia