How do I draw text at an angle using python's PIL?

carrier picture carrier · Oct 29, 2008 · Viewed 34.2k times · Source

Using Python I want to be able to draw text at different angles using PIL.

For example, imagine you were drawing the number around the face of a clock. The number 3 would appear as expected whereas 12 would we drawn rotated counter-clockwise 90 degrees.

Therefore, I need to be able to draw many different strings at many different angles.

Answer

DarenW picture DarenW · Oct 29, 2008

Draw text into a temporary blank image, rotate that, then paste that onto the original image. You could wrap up the steps in a function. Good luck figuring out the exact coordinates to use - my cold-fogged brain isn't up to it right now.

This demo writes yellow text on a slant over an image:

# Demo to add rotated text to an image using PIL

import Image
import ImageFont, ImageDraw, ImageOps

im=Image.open("stormy100.jpg")

f = ImageFont.load_default()
txt=Image.new('L', (500,50))
d = ImageDraw.Draw(txt)
d.text( (0, 0), "Someplace Near Boulder",  font=f, fill=255)
w=txt.rotate(17.5,  expand=1)

im.paste( ImageOps.colorize(w, (0,0,0), (255,255,84)), (242,60),  w)