Python Pillow - Writing Text to an Image

Adding text to images is a common image processing task that involves overlaying text onto an image. This can be done for various purposes such as adding captions, labels, watermarks or annotations to images. When adding text to images we can typically specify the text content, font, size, color and position.

In Pillow (PIL) We can use the text() method from the ImageDraw module to add text to an image.

The text() method

The text() method allows us to specify the position, text content, font and color of the text we want to add.

Syntax

The below is the basic syntax and parameters for using the text() method −

PIL.ImageDraw.Draw.text(xy, text, fill=None, font=None, anchor=None, spacing=0, align="left")

• xy − The position where the text should be placed. It should be a tuple '(x, y)' representing the coordinates.

• text − The text content that we want to add to the image.

• fill (optional) − The color of the text. It can be specified as a tuple '(R, G, B)' for RGB colors a single integer for grayscale colors or as a named color.

• font (optional) − The font to use for the text. We can specify the font using 'ImageFont.truetype()' or 'ImageFont.load()'.

• anchor (optional) − Specifies how the text should be anchored. Options include "left", "center", "right", "top", "middle" and "bottom".

• spacing (optional) − Specifies the spacing between lines of text. Use positive values to increase spacing or negative values to reduce spacing.

• align (optional) − Specifies the horizontal alignment of the text within the bounding box. Options include "left", "center" and "right".

Following is the input image used in all the examples of this chapter.

Example - Writing a Text to an Image

In this example we are adding the text Tutorialspointto the input image using the text() method of the Image module.

main.py

from PIL import Image, ImageDraw, ImageFont

#Open an image
image = Image.open("Images/book.jpg")

#Create a drawing object
draw = ImageDraw.Draw(image)

#Define text attributes
text = "Tutorialspoint"
font = ImageFont.truetype("arial.ttf", size=30)
text_color = (255, 0, 0)  
#Red
position = (50, 50)

#Add text to the image
draw.text(position, text, fill=text_color, font=font)

#Save or display the image with the added text
image.save("Output_Images/textoutput.jpg")
opentext = Image.open("Output_Images/textoutput.jpg")
opentext.show()

Output

Example - Writing another text to an Image

Here this is another example of adding text to the image by using the text() method of the ImageDraw module.

main.py

from PIL import Image, ImageDraw, ImageFont

#Open an image
image = Image.open("Images/book.jpg")

#Create a drawing object
draw = ImageDraw.Draw(image)

#Define text attributes
text = "Have a Happy learning"
font = ImageFont.truetype("arial.ttf", size=10)
text_color = (255, 0, 255)  
position = (150, 100)

#Add text to the image
draw.text(position, text, fill=text_color, font=font)

#Save or display the image with the added text
image.save("Output_Images/textoutput.jpg")
opentext = Image.open("Output_Images/textoutput.jpg")
opentext.show()

Output