Python: The _imagingft C module is not installed

Question

I've tried lots of solution that posted on the net, they don't work.

>>> import _imaging
>>> _imaging.__file__
'C:\\python26\\lib\\site-packages\\PIL\\_imaging.pyd'
>>>

So the system can find the _imaging but still can't use truetype font

from PIL import Image, ImageDraw, ImageFilter, ImageFont


im = Image.new('RGB', (300,300), 'white')
draw = ImageDraw.Draw(im)
font = ImageFont.truetype('arial.ttf', 14)
draw.text((100,100), 'test text', font = font)

Raises this error:

ImportError: The _imagingft C module is not installed

File "D:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\PIL\ImageFont.py", line 34, in __getattr__
  raise ImportError("The _imagingft C module is not installed")

Answer 1

On Ubuntu, you need to have libfreetype-dev installed before compiling PIL.

i.e.

$ sudo apt-get install libfreetype6-dev
$ sudo -s
\# pip uninstall pil
\# pip install pil

PS! Running pip install as sudo will usually install packages to /usr/local/lib on most Ubuntu versions. You may consider to install Pil in a virtual environment (virtualenv or venv) in a path owned by the user instead.

You may also consider installing pillow instead of pil, which I believe is API compatible: https://python-pillow.org.