Deprecations and removals¶
This page lists Pillow features that are deprecated, or have been removed in past major releases, and gives the alternatives to use instead.
Deprecated features¶
Below are features which are considered deprecated. Where appropriate,
a DeprecationWarning is issued.
PSFile¶
Deprecated since version 9.5.0.
The PSFile class has been deprecated and will
be removed in Pillow 11 (2024-10-15). This class was only made as a helper to
be used internally, so there is no replacement. If you need this functionality
though, it is a very short class that can easily be recreated in your own code.
PyAccess and Image.USE_CFFI_ACCESS¶
Deprecated since version 10.0.0.
Since Pillow’s C API is now faster than PyAccess on PyPy,
PyAccess has been deprecated and will be removed in Pillow
11.0.0 (2024-10-15). Pillow’s C API will now be used by default on PyPy instead.
Image.USE_CFFI_ACCESS, for switching from the C API to PyAccess, is
similarly deprecated.
ImageFile.raise_oserror¶
Deprecated since version 10.2.0.
ImageFile.raise_oserror() has been deprecated and will be removed in Pillow
12.0.0 (2025-10-15). The function is undocumented and is only useful for translating
error codes returned by a codec’s decode() method, which ImageFile already does
automatically.
IptcImageFile helper functions¶
Deprecated since version 10.2.0.
The functions IptcImageFile.dump and IptcImageFile.i, and the constant
IptcImageFile.PAD have been deprecated and will be removed in Pillow
12.0.0 (2025-10-15). These are undocumented helper functions intended
for internal use, so there is no replacement. They can each be replaced
by a single line of code using builtin functions in Python.
Removed features¶
Deprecated features are only removed in major releases after an appropriate period of deprecation has passed.
Tk/Tcl 8.4¶
Deprecated since version 8.2.0.
Support for Tk/Tcl 8.4 was removed in Pillow 10.0.0 (2023-07-01).
Categories¶
Deprecated since version 8.2.0.
im.category was removed along with the related Image.NORMAL,
Image.SEQUENCE and Image.CONTAINER attributes.
To determine if an image has multiple frames or not,
getattr(im, "is_animated", False) can be used instead.
JpegImagePlugin.convert_dict_qtables¶
Deprecated since version 8.3.0.
Since deprecation in Pillow 8.3.0, the convert_dict_qtables method no longer
performed any operations on the data given to it, and has been removed.
ImagePalette size parameter¶
Deprecated since version 8.4.0.
Before Pillow 8.3.0, ImagePalette required palette data of particular lengths by
default, and the size parameter could be used to override that. Pillow 8.3.0
removed the default required length, also removing the need for the size parameter.
ImageShow.Viewer.show_file file argument¶
Deprecated since version 9.1.0.
The file argument in show_file() has been
removed and replaced by path.
In effect, viewer.show_file("test.jpg") will continue to work unchanged.
Constants¶
Deprecated since version 9.1.0.
A number of constants have been removed.
Instead, enum.IntEnum classes have been added.
Note
Additional Image constants were deprecated in Pillow 9.1.0, but that
was reversed in Pillow 9.4.0 and those constants will now remain available.
See Constants
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FitsStubImagePlugin¶
Deprecated since version 9.1.0.
The stub image plugin FitsStubImagePlugin has been removed.
FITS images can be read without a handler through FitsImagePlugin instead.
Font size and offset methods¶
Deprecated since version 9.2.0.
Several functions for computing the size and offset of rendered text have been removed:
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Previous code:
from PIL import Image, ImageDraw, ImageFont
font = ImageFont.truetype("Tests/fonts/FreeMono.ttf")
width, height = font.getsize("Hello world")
left, top = font.getoffset("Hello world")
im = Image.new("RGB", (100, 100))
draw = ImageDraw.Draw(im)
width, height = draw.textsize("Hello world")
width, height = font.getsize_multiline("Hello\nworld")
width, height = draw.multiline_textsize("Hello\nworld")
Use instead:
from PIL import Image, ImageDraw, ImageFont
font = ImageFont.truetype("Tests/fonts/FreeMono.ttf")
left, top, right, bottom = font.getbbox("Hello world")
width, height = right - left, bottom - top
im = Image.new("RGB", (100, 100))
draw = ImageDraw.Draw(im)
width = draw.textlength("Hello world")
left, top, right, bottom = draw.multiline_textbbox((0, 0), "Hello\nworld")
width, height = right - left, bottom - top
FreeTypeFont.getmask2 fill parameter¶
Deprecated since version 9.2.0.
The undocumented fill parameter of FreeTypeFont.getmask2() has been
removed.
PhotoImage.paste box parameter¶
Deprecated since version 9.2.0.
The box parameter was unused and has been removed.
PyQt5 and PySide2¶
Deprecated since version 9.2.0.
Qt 5 reached end-of-life on 2020-12-08 for open-source users (and will reach EOL on 2023-12-08 for commercial licence holders).
Support for PyQt5 and PySide2 has been removed from ImageQt. Upgrade to
PyQt6 or
PySide6 instead.
Image.coerce_e¶
Deprecated since version 9.2.0.
This undocumented method has been removed.
PILLOW_VERSION constant¶
Deprecated since version 5.2.0.
Use __version__ instead.
It was initially removed in Pillow 7.0.0, but temporarily brought back in 7.1.0 to give projects more time to upgrade.
Image.show command parameter¶
Deprecated since version 7.2.0.
The command parameter has been removed. Use a subclass of
ImageShow.Viewer instead.
Image._showxv¶
Deprecated since version 7.2.0.
Use Image.Image.show() instead. If custom behaviour is required, use
ImageShow.register() to add a custom ImageShow.Viewer class.
ImageFile.raise_ioerror¶
Deprecated since version 7.2.0.
IOError was merged into OSError in Python 3.3.
So, ImageFile.raise_ioerror has been removed.
Use ImageFile.raise_oserror instead.
FreeType 2.7¶
Deprecated since version 8.1.0.
Support for FreeType 2.7 has been removed.
We recommend upgrading to at least FreeType 2.10.4, which fixed a severe vulnerability introduced in FreeType 2.6 (CVE-2020-15999).
im.offset¶
Deprecated since version 1.1.2.
im.offset() has been removed, call ImageChops.offset() instead.
It was documented as deprecated in PIL 1.1.2,
raised a DeprecationWarning since 1.1.5,
an Exception since Pillow 3.0.0
and NotImplementedError since 3.3.0.
Image.fromstring, im.fromstring and im.tostring¶
Deprecated since version 2.0.0.
Image.fromstring()has been removed, callImage.frombytes()instead.im.fromstring()has been removed, callfrombytes()instead.im.tostring()has been removed, calltobytes()instead.
They issued a DeprecationWarning since 2.0.0,
an Exception since 3.0.0
and NotImplementedError since 3.3.0.
ImageCms.CmsProfile attributes¶
Deprecated since version 3.2.0.
Some attributes in PIL.ImageCms.CmsProfile have been removed. From 6.0.0,
they issued a DeprecationWarning:
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Python 2.7¶
Deprecated since version 6.0.0.
Python 2.7 reached end-of-life on 2020-01-01. Pillow 6.x was the last series to support Python 2.
Image.__del__¶
Deprecated since version 6.1.0.
Implicitly closing the image’s underlying file in Image.__del__ has been removed.
Use a context manager or call Image.close() instead to close the file in a
deterministic way.
Previous method:
im = Image.open("hopper.png")
im.save("out.jpg")
Use instead:
with Image.open("hopper.png") as im:
im.save("out.jpg")
PIL.*ImagePlugin.__version__ attributes¶
Deprecated since version 6.0.0.
The version constants of individual plugins have been removed. Use PIL.__version__
instead.
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PyQt4 and PySide¶
Deprecated since version 6.0.0.
Qt 4 reached end-of-life on 2015-12-19. Its Python bindings are also EOL: PyQt4 since 2018-08-31 and PySide since 2015-10-14.
Support for PyQt4 and PySide has been removed from ImageQt. Please upgrade to PyQt5
or PySide2.
Setting the size of TIFF images¶
Deprecated since version 5.3.0.
Setting the size of a TIFF image directly (eg. im.size = (256, 256)) throws
an error. Use Image.resize instead.
VERSION constant¶
Deprecated since version 5.2.0.
VERSION (the old PIL version, always 1.1.7) has been removed. Use
__version__ instead.
Undocumented ImageOps functions¶
Deprecated since version 4.3.0.
Several undocumented functions in ImageOps have been removed. Use the equivalents
in ImageFilter instead:
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PIL.OleFileIO¶
Deprecated since version 4.0.0.
PIL.OleFileIO was removed as a vendored file in Pillow 4.0.0 (2017-01) in favour of
the upstream olefile Python package, and replaced with an ImportError in 5.0.0
(2018-01). The deprecated file has now been removed from Pillow. If needed, install from
PyPI (eg. python3 -m pip install olefile).