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.

FreeType 2.7

Deprecated since version 8.1.0.

Support for FreeType 2.7 is deprecated and will be removed in Pillow 9.0.0 (2022-01-02), when FreeType 2.8 will be the minimum supported.

We recommend upgrading to at least FreeType 2.10.4, which fixed a severe vulnerability introduced in FreeType 2.6 (CVE-2020-15999).

Image.show command parameter

Deprecated since version 7.2.0.

The command parameter will be removed in Pillow 9.0.0 (2022-01-02). Use a subclass of ImageShow.Viewer instead.

Image._showxv

Deprecated since version 7.2.0.

Image._showxv will be removed in Pillow 9.0.0 (2022-01-02). 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 will be removed in Pillow 9.0.0 (2022-01-02). Use ImageFile.raise_oserror instead.

PILLOW_VERSION constant

Deprecated since version 5.2.0.

PILLOW_VERSION will be removed in Pillow 9.0.0 (2022-01-02). Use __version__ instead.

It was initially removed in Pillow 7.0.0, but brought back in 7.1.0 to give projects more time to upgrade.

Removed features

Deprecated features are only removed in major releases after an appropriate period of deprecation has passed.

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, call Image.frombytes() instead.

  • im.fromstring() has been removed, call frombytes() instead.

  • im.tostring() has been removed, call tobytes() 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:

Removed

Use instead

color_space

Padded xcolor_space

pcs

Padded connection_space

product_copyright

Unicode copyright

product_desc

Unicode profile_description

product_description

Unicode profile_description

product_manufacturer

Unicode manufacturer

product_model

Unicode model

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.

Removed

Removed

Removed

BmpImagePlugin.__version__

Jpeg2KImagePlugin.__version__

PngImagePlugin.__version__

CurImagePlugin.__version__

JpegImagePlugin.__version__

PpmImagePlugin.__version__

DcxImagePlugin.__version__

McIdasImagePlugin.__version__

PsdImagePlugin.__version__

EpsImagePlugin.__version__

MicImagePlugin.__version__

SgiImagePlugin.__version__

FliImagePlugin.__version__

MpegImagePlugin.__version__

SunImagePlugin.__version__

FpxImagePlugin.__version__

MpoImagePlugin.__version__

TgaImagePlugin.__version__

GdImageFile.__version__

MspImagePlugin.__version__

TiffImagePlugin.__version__

GifImagePlugin.__version__

PalmImagePlugin.__version__

WmfImagePlugin.__version__

IcoImagePlugin.__version__

PcdImagePlugin.__version__

XbmImagePlugin.__version__

ImImagePlugin.__version__

PcxImagePlugin.__version__

XpmImagePlugin.__version__

ImtImagePlugin.__version__

PdfImagePlugin.__version__

XVThumbImagePlugin.__version__

IptcImagePlugin.__version__

PixarImagePlugin.__version__

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:

Removed

Use instead

ImageOps.box_blur

ImageFilter.BoxBlur

ImageOps.gaussian_blur

ImageFilter.GaussianBlur

ImageOps.gblur

ImageFilter.GaussianBlur

ImageOps.usm

ImageFilter.UnsharpMask

ImageOps.unsharp_mask

ImageFilter.UnsharpMask

PIL.OleFileIO

Deprecated since version 4.0.0.

PIL.OleFileIO was removed as a vendored file and 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).