python - pip install PIL fails

Question

I am trying to install the pip package PIL. However the install doesn't work throwing the following error.

Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement pil (from xhtml2pdf==0.0.4->-r virtualenv-reqs.txt (line 16)) (from versions: )
  Some externally hosted files were ignored as access to them may be unreliable (use --allow-external pil to allow).
No matching distribution found for pil (from xhtml2pdf==0.0.4->-r virtualenv-reqs.txt (line 16))

The install does work when I have an older version of pip, but with the current version of pip 7.1.2 I am not able to download the package. I am using the following command to install the pip packages

pip install --timeout=1000 -i http://pypi.ksjc.sh.colo/simple --trusted-host pypi.ksjc.sh.colo -r virtualenv-reqs.txt

What is the issue with this. I thought it might be an SSL issue which is why I added the --trusted-host flag. Is there any way to the --allow-external flag to be used with the virtualenv-reqs file.

Answer 1

Pillow is a maintained fork of PIL, so I recommend using Pillow. But you can't have both installed at the same time.

1. First, remove both PIL and Pillow.

2. Then install Pillow with pip install pillow (although, depending on platform, you may need some prerequisites).

3. Then make sure code is using from PIL import Image rather than import Image.