How to install Pillow on Windows using pip?

Question

I'm trying to install Pillow 3.1 on Windows. Per the instructions , I should be able to just type in:

pip install Pillow

But I get:

ValueError: jpeg is required unless explicitly disabled using --disable-jpeg, aborting

Because now (starting with versions after 3.0 I think?) libjpeg is required for pillow to be installed. I don't know how to do that magic on Windows. Maybe install Ming or something. But I was really hoping for a simple pip install.

I can disable these options through the intuitive command:

pip install --upgrade pillow --global-option="build_ext" --global-option="--disable-jpeg" --global-option="--disable-zlib"

But then the build fails because I don't have Visual C++ installed.

Yes, I can install Pillow by downloading it from the unofficial repository list . But is there a way to do it with pip on Windows without a lot of extra installs?

Answer 1

By far the easiest thing to do on Windows is install Pillow using pre-built binaries rather than trying to build it yourself.

When there's a new Pillow release, it usually takes a day or so for the Windows binaries to be built and uploaded.

You ran into this problem during this window. The Windows binaries are now up so you can install with pip install pillow (or pip install -U pillow ).

If you need Pillow during this window, you can install a given previous version with binaries like pip install pillow==3.0.0 .

Answer 2

I install it By running command prompt as administrator pip install Pillow also we can mention specific version like pip install Pillow==2.6.1

Answer 3

I spent almost a day figuring out what is wrong with pillow installation. It was working fine till yesterday and suddenly stopped working from today. Finally got it figured out, Few of my team mates upgraded python to 3.6 version which is now available for download. Since Pillow is not yet made compatible with 3.6 and is supporting only till 3.5.2 this error popped up.

Resolution is to check if Pillow supports your version of python. Once I reverted python back to 3.5.2 the installation worked like a charm and no errors encountered.

Hope this help resolve your issue.

Answer 4

In django models, you can try:

python -m pip install Pillow