Python Imaging Library - Text rendering - python

I'm trying to render some text using PIL, but the result that comes out is, frankly, crap.
For example, here's some text I wrote in Photoshop:
and what comes out of PIL:
As you can see, the results from PIL is less than satisfactory. Maybe I'm just being picky, but is there any way to draw text using PIL that gets results more close to my reference image?
Here's the code I'm using on Python 2.7 with PIL 1.1.7
image = Image.new("RGBA", (288,432), (255,255,255))
usr_font = ImageFont.truetype("resources/HelveticaNeueLight.ttf", 25)
d_usr = ImageDraw.Draw(image)
d_usr = d_usr.text((105,280), "Travis L.",(0,0,0), font=usr_font)

I came up with my own solution that I find acceptable.
What I did was render the text large, like 3x the size it needs to be then scale it resize it down with antialiasing, it's not 100% perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than default, and doesn't require cairo or pango.
for example,
image = Image.new("RGBA", (600,150), (255,255,255))
draw = ImageDraw.Draw(image)
font = ImageFont.truetype("resources/HelveticaNeueLight.ttf", fontsize)
draw.text((10, 0), txt, (0,0,0), font=font)
img_resized = image.resize((188,45), Image.ANTIALIAS)
and you endup with this result,
which is a lot better than what I was getting before with the same font.

Try using pycairo - the python bindings for the Cairo drawing library -- it is usefull for more refined drawing, with antialiased lines,
and such - and you can generate vector based images as well
Correctly handling fonts, and layout is complicated, and requires the use of
the "pango" and "pangocairo" libraries as well. Although they are made
for serious font work (all GTK+ widgets do use pango for font rendering),
the available docuemtnation and examples are extremely poor.
The sample bellow shows the prints available in the system and renders the
sample text in a font family passed as parameter on the command line.
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import cairo
import pango
import pangocairo
import sys
surf = cairo.ImageSurface(cairo.FORMAT_ARGB32, 320, 120)
context = cairo.Context(surf)
#draw a background rectangle:
context.rectangle(0,0,320,120)
context.set_source_rgb(1, 1, 1)
context.fill()
#get font families:
font_map = pangocairo.cairo_font_map_get_default()
families = font_map.list_families()
# to see family names:
print [f.get_name() for f in font_map.list_families()]
#context.set_antialias(cairo.ANTIALIAS_SUBPIXEL)
# Positions drawing origin so that the text desired top-let corner is at 0,0
context.translate(50,25)
pangocairo_context = pangocairo.CairoContext(context)
pangocairo_context.set_antialias(cairo.ANTIALIAS_SUBPIXEL)
layout = pangocairo_context.create_layout()
fontname = sys.argv[1] if len(sys.argv) >= 2 else "Sans"
font = pango.FontDescription(fontname + " 25")
layout.set_font_description(font)
layout.set_text(u"Travis L.")
context.set_source_rgb(0, 0, 0)
pangocairo_context.update_layout(layout)
pangocairo_context.show_layout(layout)
with open("cairo_text.png", "wb") as image_file:
surf.write_to_png(image_file)

I've never used PIL, but a quick review of the documentation for the Draw method indicates that PIL provides a way to render simple graphics. Photoshop provides a way to render complex graphics. To get anywhere close to Photoshop-like results requires, at a minimum, font hinting and anti-aliasing. PIL's documentation doesn't even hint at having such capabilities. You may want to look at using an external tool that might do a better job of rendering text on images. For example, ImageMagick (you'll want to use the 8-bit version, which handles standard 24-bit RGB). You can find some text drawing samples here: http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/draw/

Suggestion: use Wand or a different Imaging library
Here's an example with wand -
from wand.color import Color
from wand.image import Image
from wand.drawing import Drawing
from wand.compat import nested
with Drawing() as draw:
with Image(width=1000, height=100, background=Color('lightblue')) as img:
draw.font_family = 'Indie Flower'
draw.font_size = 40.0
draw.push()
draw.fill_color = Color('hsl(0%, 0%, 0%)')
draw.text(0,int(img.height/2 + 20), 'Hello, world!')
draw.pop()
draw(img)
img.save(filename='image.png')

In python3 there is an option for aliased fonts. I couldn't find this answer anywhere, hopefully it helps someone like me who found this question on google and had to dig a long time to find the answer.
draw = ImageDraw.Draw(img)
draw.fontmode = "L"
Mentioned in the docs here

You can also try to write the font two times it increases the quality immense.
image = Image.new("RGBA", (288,432), (255,255,255))
usr_font = ImageFont.truetype("resources/HelveticaNeueLight.ttf", 25)
d_usr = ImageDraw.Draw(image)
d_usr = d_usr.text((105,280), "Travis L.",(0,0,0), font=usr_font)
d_usr = d_usr.text((105,280), "Travis L.",(0,0,0), font=usr_font)

Related

Specific unicode character not displayed properly in python image

I am trying to create an image with some unicode characters but some of them aren't being displayed properly. You can see in this sample image:
The character in question I am trying to print is \u2BEA, which is a half star image. Unfortunately the output just shows me the generic missing character icon.
from PIL import Image
from PIL import ImageDraw
from PIL import ImageFont
output_image = Image.new('RGB', (200,100), (0,0,0))
text = '\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2BEA\u2606'
font = ImageFont.truetype("C:\\Windows\\Fonts\\yugothb.ttc", 18)
draw = ImageDraw.Draw(output_image)
draw.text((10, 10), text, (255,255,255), font=font)
output_image.show()
Note: you may need to adjust the font location for your computer
In my sample code I'm using the Yu Gothic Bold font and not getting the correct output. I have tried using other fonts such as Arial and Calibri, which produced even worse results.
My thought process is that the character isn't part of of the font but I have yet to find a font that supports it.
Does anyone know of a free font that I can use that will display this character?
Unicode 'u2BEA' defined as "STAR WITH LEFT HALF BLACK", but not defined in any font file on my platform.
Maybe you can download and use following font files,
BabelStone Han
https://www.babelstone.co.uk/Fonts/Download/BabelStoneHan.ttf
Symbola
https://dn-works.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/UFAS-Fonts/Symbola.zip
Unifont
https://unifoundry.com/pub/unifont/unifont-13.0.06/font-builds/unifont-13.0.06.ttf
Note: Last one with large font than '\u2605' and '\u2606'.
I didn't find any font that includes \u2BEA or \u2BE8 (ref: https://www.unicode.org/charts/nameslist/n_2B00.html#2BEA), but the following icons by Font Awesome might meet your needs: Star Icon (Solid) Stat Half Alt Icon (Solid) Star Icon (Regular)
In Font Awesome, f005 refers to the 'star' icon, and f5c0 refers to the 'star-half-alt' icon.
So, you can download Font Awesome Free for Desktop at https://use.fontawesome.com/releases/v5.15.3/fontawesome-free-5.15.3-desktop.zip, then draw solid \uF005\uF005\uF005\uF5C0 with 'Font Awesome 5 Free-Solid-900.otf' and a single hollow star \uF005 with 'Font Awesome 5 Free-Regular-400.otf'.
The following works properly:
from PIL import Image
from PIL import ImageDraw
from PIL import ImageFont
output_image = Image.new('RGB', (200,100), (0,0,0))
solid = ImageFont.truetype('fontawesome-free-5.15.3-desktop/otfs/Font Awesome 5 Free-Solid-900.otf', 18)
regular = ImageFont.truetype('fontawesome-free-5.15.3-desktop/otfs/Font Awesome 5 Free-Regular-400.otf', 18)
draw = ImageDraw.Draw(output_image)
draw.text((10, 10), '\uF005' * 3 + '\uF5C0', (255,255,255), font=solid)
draw.text((90, 10), '\uF005', (255,255,255), font=regular)
output_image.show()

PIL Custom Font Alternate Glyphs Not Utilized

I made a custom handwriting font and exported it to a .ttf file. The service I used, Caligriphr, allows for alternate glyphs for each character. When I type with the font in notepad, alternate glyphs display correctly. However, when I write text onto an image using PIL with the custom font, only one glyph is used
for each character. Below is my code to write on the image:
body = ""
with open('body.txt') as fin:
ls = fin.readlines()
for l in ls:
words = l.split(' ')
for word in words:
double = random.randint(1,2) == 2
if(double):
body += ' ' + word
else:
body += ' ' + word
image = Image.open('graph.jpg').convert("RGBA")
text = Image.new('RGBA', image.size, (255,255,255,0))
font = ImageFont.FreeTypeFont('Graphite.ttf', 100)
d = ImageDraw.Draw(text)
d.text(xy=offset, text=body, fill = (26,29,32, 230), font=font)
tilt = random.random() * 2
slt = text.rotate(tilt, expand=1)
sx, sy = slt.size
image.paste(slt, (0,0, sx, sy), slt)
image.save('sample.png')
Edit: showing code for how body string is constructed
Any help would be appreciated.
Alternate Glyphs Displayed in Notepad
PIL output not utilizing alternate glyphs
This may depend on whether you're using the original PIL library, or Pillow.
Getting contextual alternate glyphs in the drawn output requires that the rendering engine draw the string as an entire string (not character by character) and, while doing so, process certain data in the font that performs glyph substitutions from the default glyphs.
This data could be OpenType Layout tables in OpenType fonts, AAT tables in Apple TrueType fonts, or Graphite tables in Graphite fonts, depending on what the platform/library supports. Since you mention you got alternates in Notepad, that indicates that the font has OpenType Layout data.
Reading the Pillow ImageFont documentation, it doesn't give any indication as to whether it supports any of these font formats. However, looking at the Pillow project in Github, I see that [winbuild\config.py] pulls in Harfbuzz, and that would provide support for OpenType Layout data. So, it seems that Pillow ought to draw using the contextual alternate glyphs, though I don't know if anything is needed to trigger it. (In Notepad, it happens by default, but that's not true everywhere.)
If using Pillow, you might need to explicitly enable the Raqm layout engine when loading the font: "Raqm - A library for complex text layout" http://host-oman.github.io/libraqm/raqm-Raqm.html
This engine can be specified using the ImageFont.truetype() function:
font = ImageFont.truetype('Graphite.ttf', 100, layout_engine=ImageFont.LAYOUT_RAQM)
Docs: https://pillow.readthedocs.io/en/stable/reference/ImageFont.html#PIL.ImageFont.truetype
Testing if Raqm is availble on your system:
>>> from PIL import features
>>> features.check('raqm')
True
If not available, on my Ubuntu 20 it installs via
$ sudo apt install libraqm0
Edit: It looks like you don't even have to specify the layout_engine parameter at all. On my system alternate glyphs are used as soon as I install the Raqm library, even without changing the code.

Fonts aliasing in Pillow

I'm using Pillow 3.1.1 image library and Python 3.5.1.
I'm trying to use Pillow for drawing fonts on images. But results looks absolutely ugly and unacceptable.
1st example: looks like font not antialiased. But docs contains absolutely nothing on aliasing fonts. I've tried to make some changes (e.g. set fonttype), but texts still looks terrible.
1st example
And second example. Sometimes characters just overlay each other. And I don't have any idea how it could be fixed.
2nd example
I'm so frustrated with my experience. Is it possible to fix aliasing problem in Pillow or I should look to ImageMagick side?
Aliasing problem is my main concern, I cannot use fonts rendered such way.
Thanks for your attention!
Code example:
from PIL import Image, ImageDraw, ImageFont
DEFAULT_OFFSET = (100, 160, )
def draw_text(image, text):
base = Image.open(image).convert('RGBA')
txt_image = Image.new('RGBA', base.size, (255, 255, 255, 0))
ttf = get_font()
fnt = ImageFont.truetype(ttf, 40)
d = ImageDraw.Draw(txt_image)
# just return some string in format 'blah-blah\nblah-blah'
multiline = generate_multiline(txt_image, text)
d.multiline_text(DEFAULT_OFFSET, multiline, align='left', font=fnt, fill=(40, 40, 40, 200))
out = Image.alpha_composite(base, txt_image)
out.show()
Accordingly to martineau comment, Pillow doesn't support font anti-aliasing.

Python, PIL; Text to Image and fonts

I have an issue with writing text to an image under Python and PIL -
I'm able to write text to a png file, though not bold text. Could anyone provide an example of how to achieve this?
I thought the easiest solution may be was use a bold-variant of a text, but I'm unable to see anything in the Windows/font folder that supplies this - does this mean font types have a 'bold attribute' that is T/F?:
Code I'm using:
import PIL
from PIL import ImageFont
from PIL import Image
from PIL import ImageDraw
# font = ImageFont.truetype("Arial-Bold.ttf",14)
font = ImageFont.truetype("Arial.ttf",14)
img=Image.new("RGBA", (500,250),(255,255,255))
draw = ImageDraw.Draw(img)
draw.text((0, 0),"This is a test",(0,0,0),font=font)
draw = ImageDraw.Draw(img)
img.save("a_test.png")
A simple way to do it:
font = ImageFont.load_default().font
Also you can do a google search for 'verdana.ttf' and download it put it in the same directory as the python file:
Then add it like this:
font = ImageFont.truetype("Verdana.ttf",14)
You aren't looking at actual font files in the control panel (explorer magically turns into the font viewer control panel when in the Windows/fonts folder as well), they are grouped by family for your convenience. Double click the family to see the fonts in the family:
Then right-click and choose properties to find the file name:

PIL cuts off top of letters

I've spent a lot of time making my first web application using Python, and I'm using pil for generating images. After reading a lot, I've managed to implement proper text aligning, wrapping, generating files with many extensions etc.
However, all the text generated by PIL is cut off at the top. Here's a sample.
It should say ŻÓĆjygpq in a variety of fonts (the font names are on the left).
I've found few posts here: fonts clipping with PIL,
but I'd like to avoid using another module (aggdraw); since I've figured out so many things in PIL already I'd like to stick to that.
I've tried many fonts in different sizes, but text is still cut off. I even tried to use PIL fonts, but it still doesn't work. [Also converting OTF to BDF, and to PIL].
This is on Ubuntu. What should I try next?
I hope to be wrong on this one, but the only correct fix relies on patching how _imagingft.c
renders the text. PIL depends on FreeType for this task, but PIL seems to be miscalculating the positioning. Also, the height in getsize is overestimated (although that doesn't cause problem). For the moment, I've put a patch to handle these issues at: http://pastebin.com/jP2iLkDN (there seems to be a better way to patch the render code).
Here are some examples of the output I get without the patch and with the patch, respectively:
Results using the code present in the linked discussion. On OSX:
On Ubuntu:
Here is the code to generate the top figures:
# -*- encoding: utf8 -*-
import sys
import Image, ImageDraw, ImageFont
im = Image.new("RGBA", (1000, 1000), 'white')
draw = ImageDraw.Draw(im)
start_y = 7
text = u'\u00d1\u00d3yŻ\u00d4Ćgp\u010c\u0137'
for i in xrange(28, 46, 2):
font = ImageFont.truetype('Junicode-Bold.ttf', i)
width, height = font.getsize(text)
draw.rectangle((0, start_y, width, height + start_y), outline='blue')
draw.text((0, start_y), text, font=font, fill='black')
start_y += height + 7
im.crop((0, 0, width + 1, start_y + 2)).save(sys.argv[1])
The bottom figures were generated according to code present in the linked topic about PIL cutting off parts of the text.
Not the best solution but I see people have solved this by adding a leading a trailing space to their text.

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