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.

Image.__del__

Deprecated since version 6.1.0.

Implicitly closing the image’s underlying file in Image.__del__ has been deprecated. Use a context manager or call Image.close() instead to close the file in a deterministic way.

Deprecated:

im = Image.open("hopper.png")
im.save("out.jpg")

Use instead:

with Image.open("hopper.png") as im:
    im.save("out.jpg")

Python 2.7

Deprecated since version 6.0.0.

Python 2.7 reaches end-of-life on 2020-01-01.

Pillow 7.0.0 will be released on 2020-01-01 and will drop support for Python 2.7, making Pillow 6.x the last series to support Python 2.

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 deprecated from ImageQt and will be removed in a future version. Please upgrade to PyQt5 or PySide2.

PIL.*ImagePlugin.__version__ attributes

Deprecated since version 6.0.0.

The version constants of individual plugins have been deprecated and will be removed in a future version. Use PIL.__version__ instead.

Deprecated

Deprecated

Deprecated

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__

Setting the size of TIFF images

Deprecated since version 5.3.0.

Setting the image size of a TIFF image (eg. im.size = (256, 256)) issues a DeprecationWarning:

Setting the size of a TIFF image directly is deprecated, and will
be removed in a future version. Use the resize method instead.

PILLOW_VERSION constant

Deprecated since version 5.2.0.

PILLOW_VERSION has been deprecated and will be removed in 7.0.0. Use __version__ instead.

ImageCms.CmsProfile attributes

Deprecated since version 3.2.0.

Some attributes in ImageCms.CmsProfile are deprecated. From 6.0.0, they issue a DeprecationWarning:

Deprecated

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

Removed features

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

VERSION constant

Removed in version 6.0.0.

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

Undocumented ImageOps functions

Removed in version 6.0.0.

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

Removed in version 6.0.0.

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. pip install olefile).