Python Imaging Library

Original author(s)	Fredrik Lundh
Developer(s)	Secret Labs AB
Initial release	1995; 29 years ago (1995)[1]
Stable release	1.1.7 / November 15, 2009; 14 years ago (2009-11-15)[3]
Preview release	1.2a0[2] / 2011; 13 years ago (2011)
Written in	Python, C
Type	Library for image processing
License	Historical Permission Notice and Disclaimer[1]
Website	www.pythonware.com/products/pil/

Python Imaging Library is a free and open-source additional 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.^[3]

Development of the original project, known as PIL, was discontinued in 2011.^[2] Subsequently, a successor project named Pillow 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:

• 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

File formats

Supported file formats include PPM, PNG, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, and BMP. PIL is extensible, allowing users to create custom decoders for any file format.^[7]