I was having this problem on a Mac with Python 3.6.4. The solution was to uninstall Pillow 5.1.0 and instead install 5.0.0.

pip uninstall Pillow
pip install Pillow==5.0.0

I was too getting same problem while implememnting Image Upload using CLoudinary , but found the Above answer, but in some other way.

 sudo pip uninstall PIL

 sudo pip uninstall Pillow

 sudo pip install Pillow

After that mine Problem was solved !

For those who faced this issue with alpine-based image in docker;

Pillow requires these os level modules(for installation)

gcc
musl-dev
jpeg-dev
zlib-dev
libjpeg

You probably delete these modules after install your python packages but, for use Pillow without issue, it requires libjpeg
Unless, Django raise with error:

Cannot use ImageField because Pillow is not installed.

So add this module in Dockerfile(or don’t uninstall):

RUN apk add libjpeg

works for me

Had a similar problem, and my solution was much simpler:

Apparently packages PIL and Pillow can’t coexist. If you want to use Pillow you first have to uninstall PIL and then install Pillow.

If you are on Mac, you have to install a few libraries as well using brew. Mentioned below is the sequence of steps:

$pip uninstall PIL
$brew install libtiff libjpeg webp little-cms2
$pip install Pillow

To test if pillow is installed and ready to use, open python interpreter and try to import the following:

>>> from PIL import Image

*note that the library still says PIL but now it is importing from Pillow instead of PIL.

If you are able to successfully import then you are good to go (in all probability you won’t have to worry about setting PYTHONPATH or 32/64-bit installations)

Source: https://pillow.readthedocs.io/en/latest/installation.html

macOS High Sierra 10.13.6
My solution was

pip3 install Pillow

Not

pip install Pillow

I do not know why, but uninstalling and then reinstalling Pillow (same version) solved this problem for me.

python -m pip uninstall Pillow
python -m pip install Pillow

The Pillow version was 7.1.1.

For some reason,

pip install pillow

wasnt working.
so I went to the official site of pillow and used

python -m pip install --upgrade pillow

which solved my issue of installing pillow.

I was able to solve mine by going to this link in the docs:
https://pillow.readthedocs.io/en/latest/installation.html

Answer: PILLOW VERSION WILL NOT WORK IN A PYTHON VERSION IT WAS NOT MADE FOR!

So I had to check the chart. I was running django on python==3.9.13, so I needed to uninstall the pillow==7.2.0 to Install pillow==8.3.1 for my python version 3.9.13 and Boom it started working.

I did this:

pip uninstall Pillow
pip install Pillow==8.3.1

OR

python -m pip uninstall Pillow
python -m pip install Pillow==8.3.1

So it all depends on the python version you are running pillow on.

I had this error using PyCharm’s debugger. I had to go to Settings->’Project Interpreter’ highlight ‘Pillow’ and hit the little up arrow on the right to upgrade it. Then the error disappeared.

In your ‘site-packages’ file, download your desired pillow (.whl) file, then install it using command, ‘pip install "directory"’.

I have seen that this error occurs due to wrong version of pillow, in term of bit installation in my case.

If you have 32 bit machine then you have to download 32 bit Pillow.
If you have 64 bit machine then you have to download 64 bit Pillow.

In my case I was using Visual Studio but when I tried to install Pillow using PyCharm then it downloaded and installed suitable Pillow version automatically which work was not being done by Visual Studio automatically.

Visual Studio was installing Pillow wrong version again and again many times when I was trying to install Pillow by uninstalling.
Basically it was fetching .whl file from cache file I guess.

For python3 make sure your $PYTHONPATH has the virtualenv path and
Instead of running the command

python manage.py migrate

Run:

python3 manage.py migrate

If you are using Pillow 4.1.0 with Python 3.6.0 then upgrading the Python version will fix this issue.
Found the solution here: https://github.com/python-pillow/Pillow/issues/2479#issuecomment-292252147

I had the same problem in my virtual environment, even though Pillow was installed. Also installing a lower version didn’t help. As soon I left my virtual environment it worked. Maybe this is helping someone.

There is the command:

    (wb_env) C:\Users\Taranis\Dropbox\08_Coding\Python 
    Coding\Programme\Projekt_Webblog\tim_webblog>python manage.py makemigrations app_webblog

The error:

    SystemCheckError: System check identified some issues:

    ERRORS:
    app_webblog.BlogEntry.entry_img: (fields.E210) Cannot use ImageField because 
    Pillow is not installed.
    HINT: Get Pillow at https://pypi.org/project/Pillow/ or run command "pip install 
    Pillow".

What worked for me was to uninstall Pillow from user folder and install it with sudo.

Initial install was:

$ pip3 install Pillow --user

installed to: ~/.local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/Pillow-7.0.0.dist-info

So first uninstalled it and then installed with sudo:

$ pip3 uninstall Pillow
$ sudo pip3 install Pillow

new location: /usr/local/lib64/python3.7/site-packages/Pillow-7.0.0.dist-info and problem was fixed.

Window users

First Uninstall Pip

pip uninstall Pillow

Then Install it Again

pip install Pillow

Ubuntu users

First Uninstall Pip

sudo pip uninstall Pillow

Then Install it Again

sudo pip install Pillow

I Hope It will works for you

This is what worked for me,

sudo apt-get install libjpeg-dev -y
sudo apt-get install zlib1g-dev -y
sudo apt-get install libfreetype6-dev -y
sudo apt-get install liblcms1-dev -y
sudo apt-get install libopenjp2-7 -y
sudo apt-get install libtiff5 -y

You probably have some of them installed but not all. For me, some of them weren’t and that was causing the issue.

You might get ModuleNotFoundError: No module named ‘pillow’

This could be because you added it to your installed_apps in settings.py

To solve this:

Just remove it from installed_apps or change it to "PIL"

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',

    # installed apps
    'pillow',
]

to this:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',

    # installed apps
    'PIL',
]

If you just comment it out,

# 'pillow'

you will still get ModuleNotFoundError: No module named ‘pillow’

so make sure you delete it completely.

If you are coding on a raspberry with a lite os, this fixed my bug :

sudo apt-get install libopenjp2-7-dev

Good Luck 😉

Got similar issue, I was running django in a virtual environment.

pip install Pillow

command installed Pillow but django was not recognising it.

This solved the issue for me:

python3 -m pip install Pillow

Initially I got issue when I tried running the pip command using python -m
but then I installed pip using python3

  curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py -o get-pip.py

   python3 get-pip.py --force-reinstall

and then ran python3 -m pip install Pillow

1. pip uninstall Pillow
2. Then Press, Y
3. After that, pip ins

you just install pillow in your (venv) not in your main python path. you have to use poweshell or commandline of pycharm (for example).

i just do to add pillow in Project Settings–>Python interpreter and download

If you have installed Pillow but the error is persisting , This will solve the problem

python3 -m pip install --upgrade pip
python3 -m pip install --upgrade Pillow

If you’re using VS Code, try to restart the editor. It works (for me).