How to get Python Pillow (PIL) version?

13
votes

I would like to get the PIL (Python Imaging Library) version installed on a Mac OS X computer. I've previously installed Pillow, a more friendly fork of PIL.

I've tried:

import PIL
print('PIL',PIL.__version__)

And I've got the error: 

AttributeError: module 'PIL' has no attribute '__version__'
5
pythonpython-imaging-librarypillow
This question and answer have nothing specifically to do wtih Mac OS X, it would be nice to simply remove that from the title, it throws people off searching for this question on google. - David Parks

5 Answers

11
votes

Use PIL.__version__.

Before Pillow version 6.0.0, its version string could be accessed via the following variable names:

>>> PIL.version.__version__
'5.1.0'
>>> PIL.PILLOW_VERSION
'5.1.0'
>>> PIL.__version__
'5.1.0'
>>>

Not to be confused with the last PIL version that Pillow is built on (and thus hangs on to):

>>> PIL.VERSION
'1.1.7'

There was no information on this in the documentation regarding the fork from PIL: https://pillow.readthedocs.io/en/5.1.x/about.html#why-a-fork

However, PIL's homepage states

Status
The current free version is PIL 1.1.7. This release supports Python 1.5.2 >and newer, including 2.5 and 2.6. A version for 3.X will be released later.

That release is dated "November 15, 2009".

This confirms it's just PIL's last release version.

The version string is defined in these source files: https://github.com/python-pillow/Pillow/blob/master/src/PIL/version.py and https://github.com/python-pillow/Pillow/blob/master/src/PIL/__init__.py, or search for all occurences of __version__ in the repository.

(On my Windows, this is installed to %LocalAppData%\Programs\Python\Python36\Lib\site-packages\PIL\version.py)

Update

https://pillow.readthedocs.io/en/stable/releasenotes/5.2.0.html

5.2.0 API Changes Deprecations

These version constants have been deprecated. VERSION will be removed in Pillow 6.0.0, and PILLOW_VERSION will be removed after that.

`PIL.VERSION` (old PIL version 1.1.7)
`PIL.PILLOW_VERSION`
`PIL.Image.VERSION`
`PIL.Image.PILLOW_VERSION`

Use PIL.__version__ instead.

https://pillow.readthedocs.io/en/stable/releasenotes/6.0.0.html

6.0.0 Backwards Incompatible Changes

Removed deprecated VERSION

VERSION (the old PIL version, always 1.1.7) has been removed. Use __version__ instead.

6
votes

To get the version for PIL do

>>> PIL.VERSION
'1.1.7'

Edit:

This gives you only the PIL version not the Pillow version. See this answer for more detail.

2
votes

I tried the above answers, nothing worked for me, but this did (for version 8.0.1:

from PIL import Image
dir(Image)
# AH HAH!  there is an attribute __version__
print(Image.__version__)

8.0.1

1
votes

Finally I've found a solution:

from PIL import Image 
print('PIL',Image.VERSION)
0
votes

If you are not importing the entire PIL library but instead have something like this:

from PIL import Image, ImageTk, ImageDraw, ImageFont

Then this works:

print('Image.VERSION', Image.VERSION)
print('Image.PILLOW_VERSION', Image.PILLOW_VERSION)

Results:

Image.VERSION 1.1.7
Image.PILLOW_VERSION 3.1.2

Note: Ubuntu 16.04.6 LTS uses older version of Pillow that was tested back in 2016. It appears the Ubuntu Folks (Canonical) don't like to upgrade python versions after testing.