Image library for Python 3

As of March 30, 2012, I have tried and failed to get the sloonz fork on GitHub to open images. I got it to compile ok, but it didn't actually work. I also tried building gohlke's library, and it compiled also but failed to open any images. Someone mentioned PythonMagick above, but it only compiles on Windows. See PythonMagick on the wxPython wiki.

PIL was last updated in 2009, and while it's website says they are working on a Python 3 port, it's been 3 years, and the mailing list has gone cold.

To solve my Python 3 image manipulation problem, I am using subprocess.call() to execute ImageMagick shell commands. This method works.

See the subprocess module documentation.

Depending on what is needed, scikit-image may be the best choice, with manipulations going way beyond PIL and the current version of Pillow. Very well-maintained, at least as much as Pillow. Also, the underlying data structures are from Numpy and Scipy, which makes its code incredibly interoperable. Examples that pillow can't handle:

You can see its power in the gallery. This paper provides a great intro to it. Good luck!

If you are on Python3 you can also use the library PILasOPENCV which works in Python 2 and 3. Function api calls are the same as in PIL or pillow but internally it works with OpenCV and numpy to load, save and manipulate images. Have a look at https://github.com/bunkahle/PILasOPENCV or install it with pip install PILasOPENCV. Not all PIL functions have been simulated but the most common functions work.