Python Imaging Library

Python Imaging Library
Original author(s) Fredrik Lundh
Developer(s) Secret Labs AB
Initial release 1995[1]
Stable release 1.1.7 / November 15, 2009[2]
Preview release 1.2a0[3] / 2011
Written in Python, C
Type Library for image processing
License Python Imaging Library license[1]
Website www.pythonware.com/products/pil/

Python Imaging Library (abbreviated as PIL) 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".[2]

Development appears to be discontinued with the last commit to the PIL repository coming in 2011.[3] Consequently, a successor project called Pillow has forked the PIL repository and added Python 3.x support.[4] This fork has been adopted as a replacement for the original PIL in Linux distributions including Debian[5] and Ubuntu (since 13.04).[6]

Capabilities

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

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.[7]

Usage example

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

from PIL import Image, ImageFilter
 
original = Image.open("lena.ppm") # load an image from the hard drive
blurred = original.filter(ImageFilter.BLUR) # blur the image
 
original.show() # display both images
blurred.show()

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 "Software License". Secret Labs AB. Retrieved December 8, 2013.
  2. 2.0 2.1 "Python Imaging Library". Secret Labs AB. Retrieved December 8, 2013.
  3. 3.0 3.1 "effbot / pil-2009-raclette". Retrieved December 8, 2013.
  4. "Pillow: a modern fork of PIL". Retrieved December 8, 2013.
  5. "Details of package python-imaging in sid". packages.debian.org. Software in the Public Interest. Retrieved December 8, 2013.
  6. "Details of package python-imaging in raring". ubuntu.com. Canonical Ltd. Retrieved December 8, 2013.
  7. "D. Writing Your Own File Decoder". Effbot.org. Retrieved 2014-01-28.

External links

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