Python: The _imagingft C module is not installed

Question

I've tried lots of solution that posted on the net, they don't work.

>>> import _imaging
>>> _imaging.__file__
'C:\\python26\\lib\\site-packages\\PIL\\_imaging.pyd'
>>>

So the system can find the _imaging but still can't use truetype font

from PIL import Image, ImageDraw, ImageFilter, ImageFont


im = Image.new('RGB', (300,300), 'white')
draw = ImageDraw.Draw(im)
font = ImageFont.truetype('arial.ttf', 14)
draw.text((100,100), 'test text', font = font)

Raises this error:

ImportError: The _imagingft C module is not installed

File "D:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\PIL\ImageFont.py", line 34, in __getattr__
  raise ImportError("The _imagingft C module is not installed")

score 85 · Answer 1 · edited Jan 07 '21 at 05:36

85

On Ubuntu, you need to have libfreetype-dev installed before compiling PIL.

i.e.

$ sudo apt-get install libfreetype6-dev
$ sudo -s
\# pip uninstall pil
\# pip install --no-cache-dir pil

PS! Running pip install as sudo will usually install packages to /usr/local/lib on most Ubuntu versions. You may consider to install Pil in a virtual environment (virtualenv or venv) in a path owned by the user instead.

You may also consider installing pillow instead of pil, which I believe is API compatible: https://python-pillow.org. Note that Pillow also requires libfreetype-dev and you might need to follow the same uninstall/install steps if libfreetype-dev was not present during the initial installation.

edited Jan 07 '21 at 05:36

Marek Sapota

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answered Apr 24 '11 at 11:20

Sindre Myren

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There is an error in the "aptitude install aptitude install" ;) – anders Jun 14 '12 at 11:46
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This doesn't work for me (Ubuntu 12.04, pip 1.1.7, Python 2.7). I uninstalled pip, apitude installed libfreetype6-dev, then ran `sudo pip install --upgrade pil`, but the problem persists. – Matthew Flaschen Dec 12 '12 at 00:41
Didn't work for me either (on Mac). I installed libfreetype from source (from [here](http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/freetype/)), then ran `sudo pip install --upgrade pil`, but was told that PIL was up to date. Quite python and reran the original script, got the same error. – scubbo Feb 04 '13 at 05:05
2

This worked for me on Xubuntu. sudo apt-get install libfreetype6-dev. And then in my virtualenv i ran, pip install Pillow (without sudo). You don't want to sudo pip in virtual environments. – pymarco Dec 04 '13 at 16:47
@pymacro: As you say, you don't want to sudo a pip install if you use a virtualenv. You probably also don't want to sudo any pip or easy_install operation if you can avoid it, as installing things outside of your distor's package management system makes your install kind of dirty. I wanted to keep this comment as short as poosible and still work though. Please take proper care of your Linux install:-) – Sindre Myren Feb 12 '14 at 11:51
This didn't work for me because of the cached version of pillow. I needed to `pip uninstall pillow` and then delete `~/.cache/pip/.../pillow*` and then `pip install pillow`. Once pillow got recompiled everything worked properly. – Kurt Sep 09 '15 at 17:04
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For the reference of anyone still getting this issue, @Rafay's solution on using `pip install --no-cache-dir pillow` might help. – Sindre Myren May 17 '17 at 21:52
@scubbo I face with Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement pil in mac high sierra – Yuseferi Apr 03 '18 at 10:37
@SindreMyren Thanks for this. I had to do the `pip uninstall` and `install` to get it to work. – Torrien Jun 09 '20 at 00:30

score 57 · Accepted Answer · edited Nov 08 '11 at 13:18

57

Your installed PIL was compiled without libfreetype.

You can get precompiled installer of PIL (compiled with libfreetype) here (and many other precompiled Python C Modules):

http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/

edited Nov 08 '11 at 13:18

bluish

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answered Oct 25 '10 at 03:24

Imran

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If you want linux binaries you'll have to get it from your distro's software repository I guess. – Imran Oct 25 '10 at 03:40
This was exactly what I needed to get TTF support on Windows. The PIL binaries on the official page were having sxs issues when loading _imagingft.pyd. Thanks! – Michael Labbé Oct 25 '10 at 05:49
Nowadays you can also get Pillow from [PyPI - the Python Package Index](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/Pillow). – martineau Apr 18 '13 at 18:25
Looks like there is no PIL (not Pillow) any more. Is there any other source to download it? – LA_ Sep 21 '13 at 16:30
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@LA_ Pillow is a drop-in replacement for PIL – Imran Sep 22 '13 at 05:42
Thanks! Works for me! – soloice Feb 18 '17 at 17:41

score 55 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 13 '15 at 08:57

55

The following worked for me on Ubuntu 14.04.1 64 bit:

sudo apt-get install libfreetype6-dev

Then, in the virtualenv:

pip uninstall pillow
pip install --no-cache-dir pillow

answered Sep 13 '15 at 08:57

Rafay

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Thanks for the cache! Also, we can remove pip cache before re install Pillow: rm -rf ~/.cache/pip – LennyLip Jan 19 '16 at 08:25
3

Just a comment, in CentOS 6: yum install freetype-devel libjpeg-devel libpng-devel – azuax Jun 22 '16 at 13:21

score 17 · Answer 4 · answered May 12 '13 at 18:04

17

solution for CentOS 6 (and probably other rpm based):

yum install freetype-devel libjpeg-devel libpng-devel

pip uninstall pil Pillow
pip install pil Pillow

answered May 12 '13 at 18:04

fsw

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use the first command to install *devel and then install python-imaging using "yum" (in epel repository) to get image displayed. – fanchyna Oct 23 '14 at 19:17

score 14 · Answer 5 · answered Aug 01 '12 at 09:11

14

In OS X, I did this to solve the problem:

pip uninstall PIL
ln -s /usr/X11/include/freetype2 /usr/local/include/
ln -s /usr/X11/include/ft2build.h /usr/local/include/
ln -s /usr/X11/lib/libfreetype.6.dylib /usr/local/lib/
ln -s /usr/X11/lib/libfreetype.6.dylib /usr/local/lib/libfreetype.dylib
pip install PIL

answered Aug 01 '12 at 09:11

suzanshakya

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Didn't work for me - after each line `ln -s ...` I got `ln: /usr/local/lib/libfreetype.dylib: File exists`. Problem persists. Do you have any more ideas? – scubbo Feb 04 '13 at 05:14
Would you try `ln -sf`? `f` overwrites the existing files, so make sure to backup the existing files. – suzanshakya Feb 04 '13 at 10:29
Just tried `ln -sf`, as recommended. After the first such line, I got `ln: /usr/local/include//freetype2: Operation not permitted`. Repeating the operation with `sudo` gave the same error. – scubbo Feb 04 '13 at 18:13
I'm on Mavericks, and /usr/X11/include/freetype2 does not exist on my system. – volvox Jul 29 '14 at 09:14
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@volvox, try installing freetype with `brew install freetype`. – suzanshakya Jul 29 '14 at 10:46
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@suzanshakya thanks that worked perfectly (once I'd installed homebrew). – volvox Jul 29 '14 at 15:57

score 12 · Answer 6 · edited Feb 18 '22 at 10:00

12

Basically, you need to install freetype before installing PIL.

If you're using Homebrew on OS X it's just a matter of:

brew remove pil
brew install freetype
brew install pil

edited Feb 18 '22 at 10:00

Glorfindel

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answered Aug 21 '12 at 14:47

Roshambo

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If it doesn't work, add `brew link freetype` before install PIL. – user805627 Oct 09 '12 at 21:37
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also the package is called `freetype` for macports users. – DanH Feb 21 '13 at 06:02
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I had to reinstall `freetype` and `libjpeg` through brew and then relink them using `brew link --overwrite freetype` and `brew link --overwrite libjpeg`, then reinstalled `pil`, then it finally worked. Hope this helps anyone – gitaarik Jun 20 '13 at 14:23
`brew install pil` return error: `ImportError: The _imagingft C module is not installed` – Deng Haijun Apr 26 '16 at 13:40

score 12 · Answer 7 · answered Jan 26 '13 at 16:22

12

Worked for Ubuntu 12.10:

sudo pip uninstall PIL
sudo apt-get install libfreetype6-dev
sudo apt-get install python-imaging

answered Jan 26 '13 at 16:22

DmitrySandalov

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I changed the third line from "sudo apt-get install python-imaging" to "pip install PIL" and it worked. – zephyr Jul 08 '13 at 23:55
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Worked for me on debian, note that I had libjpeg-dev zlib1g-dev libpng12-dev already installed – cgl Dec 26 '14 at 23:13

score 2 · Answer 8 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:10

2

For OS X (I'm running 10.6 but should work for others) I was able to get around this error using the advice from this post. Basically you need to install a couple of the dependencies then reinstall PIL.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:10

Community

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answered Jul 10 '12 at 17:48

Bovard

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score 2 · Answer 9 · edited May 30 '14 at 14:20

The followed works on ubuntu 12.04:

pip uninstall PIL
apt-get install libjpeg-dev
apt-get install libfreetype6-dev
apt-get install zlib1g-dev
apt-get install libpng12-dev
pip install PIL --upgrade

when your see "-- JPEG support avaliable" that means it works.

But, if it still doesn't work when your edit your jpeg image, check the python path!!
My python path missed '/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/PIL-1.1.7-py2.7-linux-x86_64.egg/', so I edit the ~/.bashrc add the following code to this file:

export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/PIL-1.1.7-py2.7-linux-x86_64.egg/

then, finally, it works!!

score 2 · Answer 10 · answered Mar 18 '14 at 13:24

For me none of the solutions posted here so far has worked. I found another solution here: http://codeinthehole.com/writing/how-to-install-pil-on-64-bit-ubuntu-1204/

First install the dev packages:

$ sudo apt-get install python-dev libjpeg-dev libfreetype6-dev zlib1g-dev

Then create some symlinks:

$ sudo ln -s /usr/lib/`uname -i`-linux-gnu/libfreetype.so /usr/lib/
$ sudo ln -s /usr/lib/`uname -i`-linux-gnu/libjpeg.so /usr/lib/
$ sudo ln -s /usr/lib/`uname -i`-linux-gnu/libz.so /usr/lib/

Afterwards PIL should compile just fine:

$ pip install PIL --upgrade

score 1 · Answer 11 · answered May 08 '12 at 19:41

Ubuntu 11.10 installs zlib and freetype2 libraries following the multi-arch spec (e.g. /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu). You may use PIL setup environment variables so it can find them. However it only works on PIL versions beyond the pil-117 tag.

export PIL_SETUP_ZLIB_ROOT=/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu
export PIL_SETUP_FREETYPE_ROOT=/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu
pip install -U PIL

Since your multi-arch path may be different (x86-64), it's preferable to install the -dev packages and use pkg-config to retrieve the correct path.

pkg-config --variable=libdir zlib
pkg-config --variable=libdir freetype2

Another way given by Barry on Pillow's setup.py is to use dpkg-architecture -qDEB_HOST_MULTIARCH to obtain the proper library directory suffix.

See https://bitbucket.org/effbot/pil-2009-raclette/issue/18

score 1 · Answer 12 · answered Jan 07 '14 at 16:52

1

I used homebrew to install freetype and I have the following in /usr/local/lib:

libfreetype.6.dylib libfreetype.a libfreetype.dylib

But the usual:

pip install pil

Does not work for me, so I used:

pip install http://effbot.org/downloads/Imaging-1.1.6.tar.gz

answered Jan 07 '14 at 16:52

tc_geophysics

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the second option worked for me. Thanks @tc_geophysics – MegaBytes Jan 20 '16 at 06:14

score 1 · Answer 13 · answered Nov 18 '16 at 15:29

1

In my Mac, the following steps in terminal works:

$ brew install freetype
$ sudo pip uninstall pil
$ sudo pip install pillow

hopes it works for you. Good luck!

answered Nov 18 '16 at 15:29

Yun.Lu

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won't `sudo pip` affect the global pil rather than the virtual environment pil? – Saurabh Ariyan May 01 '18 at 13:38

score 1 · Answer 14 · answered Dec 08 '20 at 20:13

1

Instead of running: pip install Pillow

Run: pip install Image

darwin Big Sur pyenv

answered Dec 08 '20 at 20:13

xbalazsyf

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what does "darwin Big Sur pyenv" mean? – Ruli Dec 08 '20 at 20:51
@Ruli it means he's using MacOS (darwin), the version is Big Sur and his python setup is via pyenv. – Ryu Kent Feb 11 '21 at 12:06

score 1 · Answer 15 · edited Nov 22 '22 at 13:58

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In Windows 11 we need to solve this problem 'pip install --upgrade pip' 'pip install --upgrade Pillow'

pip install --upgrade Pillow

edited Nov 22 '22 at 13:58

Nick ODell

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answered Jul 26 '22 at 12:27

shubham koli

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As it’s currently written, your answer is unclear. Please [edit] to add additional details that will help others understand how this addresses the question asked. You can find more information on how to write good answers [in the help center](/help/how-to-answer). – Community Jul 27 '22 at 11:12

score 0 · Answer 16 · edited Nov 22 '22 at 13:57

0

In my ubuntu12.04, after I installed python-imaging using apt-get, it works.

edited Nov 22 '22 at 13:57

Nick ODell

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answered Mar 18 '14 at 02:50

joest

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score 0 · Answer 17 · answered Oct 26 '22 at 08:44

Installing libtruetype-dev did not work for me on ubuntu container. My pillow was not compiled and pip installed one without truetype. (maybe it was cached this way by docker container provider). What did work was installing pill ow via conda:

pip uninstall -y pillow    
conda install pillow

Python: The _imagingft C module is not installed

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