pytesseract: ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'PIL'

I am trying to get pytesseract to run on a Windows 10 system but unfortunately always get the following error log:

  File "C:\Users\Marc\PycharmProjects\test\venv\lib\site-packages\pytesseract\pytesseract.py", line 27, in <module>
    from PIL import Image
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'PIL'

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\Marc\PycharmProjects\test\main.py", line 15, in <module>
    import pytesseract
  File "C:\Users\Marc\PycharmProjects\test\venv\lib\site-packages\pytesseract\__init__.py", line 2, in <module>
    from .pytesseract import ALTONotSupported
  File "C:\Users\Marc\PycharmProjects\test\venv\lib\site-packages\pytesseract\pytesseract.py", line 29, in <module>
    import Image
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'Image'

Process finished with exit code 1

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 4 years ago
Comments: 16

Commits related to this issue

Bump version to 0.3.9 Resoleves #316 — committed to madmaze/pytesseract by int3l 2 years ago

Most upvoted comments

Updating either pip or setuptools solves the problem. Versions that don’t work: pip 20.0.2, setuptools 45.2.0. Versions that do: pip 21.3.1, setuptools 60.5.0.

VelorumS on Jan 25, 2022

hi, it’s ok with version 0.3.7, but 0.3.8 crash with same error

from .pytesseract import ALTONotSupported File "/tmp/pip-install-wt3k8kh5/pytesseract/pytesseract/pytesseract.py", line 28, in <module> import Image ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'Image'

halvomez on Jul 21, 2021

Yeah … It seems that Pillow depends on newer versions of those tools, for reference they even include the update step in the Pillow - Installation docs

Now I have to find which is the minimum version of those tools that allow proper installation and include them to the setup requirements …

bozhodimitrov on Jan 25, 2022

While this issue is closed, I’ve observed something interesting – but I don’t know where the breakdown is. I’m installing pytesseract (no version specified) as in a requirements.txt

python3 -m venv /tmp/envdir
. /tmp/envdir/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

Adding Pillow prior to pytesseract in the requirements.txt appears to do something, but I still get the issue as above. However, if, and only if, I explicitly run pip install Pillow (with or without it being in the requirements.txt) do I get pytesseract to install.

eddiezab on Jul 23, 2021