Can't install Pillow in Windows

Question

The installation process asks for zlib and I even setup & cloned it from Github. I'm new to all of this.

Error message:

C:\Users\GThell\Pillow>pip install -e .
Obtaining file:///C:/Users/GThell/Pillow
Requirement already satisfied: olefile in c:\users\gthell\appdata\local\programs\python\python36\lib\site-packages (from Pillow==3.5.0.dev0)
Installing collected packages: Pillow
  Running setup.py develop for Pillow
    Complete output from command c:\users\gthell\appdata\local\programs\python\python36\python.exe -c "import setuptools, tokenize;__file__='C:\\Users\\GThell\\Pillow\\setup.py';f=getattr(tokenize, 'open', open)(__file__);code=f.read().replace('\r\n', '\n');f.close();exec(compile(code, __file__, 'exec'))" develop --no-deps:
    Single threaded build for windows
    running develop
    running egg_info
    writing Pillow.egg-info\PKG-INFO
    writing dependency_links to Pillow.egg-info\dependency_links.txt
    writing requirements to Pillow.egg-info\requires.txt
    writing top-level names to Pillow.egg-info\top_level.txt
    warning: manifest_maker: standard file '-c' not found

    reading manifest file 'Pillow.egg-info\SOURCES.txt'
    reading manifest template 'MANIFEST.in'
    warning: no previously-included files found matching '.coveragerc'
    warning: no previously-included files found matching '.editorconfig'
    warning: no previously-included files found matching '.landscape.yaml'
    warning: no previously-included files found matching 'appveyor.yml'
    warning: no previously-included files found matching 'tox.ini'
    warning: no previously-included files matching '*.pyc' found anywhere in distribution
    warning: no previously-included files matching '*.so' found anywhere in distribution
    writing manifest file 'Pillow.egg-info\SOURCES.txt'
    running build_ext


    The headers or library files could not be found for zlib,
    a required dependency when compiling Pillow from source.

    Please see the install instructions at:
       http://pillow.readthedocs.io/en/latest/installation.html

    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "C:\Users\GThell\Pillow\setup.py", line 778, in <module>
        zip_safe=not debug_build(), )
      File "c:\users\gthell\appdata\local\programs\python\python36\lib\distutils\core.py", line 148, in setup
        dist.run_commands()
      File "c:\users\gthell\appdata\local\programs\python\python36\lib\distutils\dist.py", line 955, in run_commands
        self.run_command(cmd)
      File "c:\users\gthell\appdata\local\programs\python\python36\lib\distutils\dist.py", line 974, in run_command
        cmd_obj.run()
      File "c:\users\gthell\appdata\local\programs\python\python36\lib\site-packages\setuptools\command\develop.py", line 34, in run
        self.install_for_development()
      File "c:\users\gthell\appdata\local\programs\python\python36\lib\site-packages\setuptools\command\develop.py", line 119, in install_for_development
        self.run_command('build_ext')
      File "c:\users\gthell\appdata\local\programs\python\python36\lib\distutils\cmd.py", line 313, in run_command
        self.distribution.run_command(command)
      File "c:\users\gthell\appdata\local\programs\python\python36\lib\distutils\dist.py", line 974, in run_command
        cmd_obj.run()
      File "c:\users\gthell\appdata\local\programs\python\python36\lib\distutils\command\build_ext.py", line 339, in run
        self.build_extensions()
      File "C:\Users\GThell\Pillow\setup.py", line 549, in build_extensions
        raise RequiredDependencyException(f)
    __main__.RequiredDependencyException: zlib

    During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
      File "C:\Users\GThell\Pillow\setup.py", line 790, in <module>
        raise RequiredDependencyException(msg)
    __main__.RequiredDependencyException:

    The headers or library files could not be found for zlib,
    a required dependency when compiling Pillow from source.

    Please see the install instructions at:
       http://pillow.readthedocs.io/en/latest/installation.html

Answer 1

use:

easy_install pillow

pip doesn't work somehow

Answer 2

You can try installing Pillow with its Windows Installer package.
Check https://pypi.org/project/Pillow/#files, Windows Installer packages are at the bottom of the page.
Worked for me with Python 3.7.

Answer 3

In windows, some packages wont work due to framework issues .same can be download and use it via 3rd party site.

Unofficial python Binaries

chose corresponding version download the same.

and then for eg,

pip install Downloads\\Pillow.whl

now it will install without error

Answer 4

I have recently installed Pillow under Cygwin's Python3.6 and needed following packages:

• gcc-core
• libjpeg-devel
• zlib-devel
• python3-devel
• python3-setuptools (to run easy-install-3.6)

I have also installed pip using:

easy-install-3.6 install pip

Then finally:

pip3 install pillow

succeeded.

Answer 5

On Windows, you're better off using precompiled binaries (wheels) than building from source.

Python 3.6.0 final is due out later this week on 2016-12-23 and Pillow does not yet support it. Hopefully it will be supported for the next quarterly release, on 1 January 2017.

However, in the meantime, you can download an unofficial wheel from here, then pip install filename.whl

http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/#pillow

Answer 6

The URL at bottom of error message says:

Windows Installation We provide Pillow binaries for Windows compiled for the matrix of supported Pythons in both 32 and 64-bit versions in wheel, egg, and executable installers. These binaries have all of the optional libraries included:

pip install Pillow

I would try that, to avoid dependency problems such as you have run into.

edit: The pillow only support Pillow >= 2.0.0 < 3.5.0 and not 3.6.0

edit: Hopefully this work, I was not able to actually test on Windows.