PIL ImageGrab Screenshot Guide | Generated by AI
Prerequisites
To use ImageGrab from the PIL (Pillow) library, ensure you have Pillow installed. On Windows, install it via pip:
pip install Pillow
No additional setup is typically needed for Windows, as ImageGrab uses native Windows APIs.
Basic Usage
ImageGrab.grab() captures the entire screen (all monitors) as a PIL Image object. Here’s a simple example to take a screenshot and save it as a PNG file:
from PIL import ImageGrab
# Capture the entire screen
screenshot = ImageGrab.grab()
# Save the image to a file
screenshot.save("screenshot.png")
This will save a file named screenshot.png in your current working directory.
Additional Options
- Capture a specific region: Specify a bounding box (left, top, right, bottom) as a tuple of pixel coordinates.
# Capture a 300x300 pixel area starting at (100, 100) region = (100, 100, 400, 400) # Adjust coordinates as needed screenshot = ImageGrab.grab(bbox=region) screenshot.save("region_screenshot.png") - Include the mouse cursor (if supported; check Pillow documentation for version details):
# Note: This may require include_layered_windows=True on some systems screenshot = ImageGrab.grab(include_layered_windows=True) - Show the image: Use
screenshot.show()to open it in your default image viewer (for testing).
Notes
- Coordinates are in pixels, with (0, 0) at the top-left of the primary monitor.
- For multi-monitor setups,
grab()captures all screens as one composite image. - If you encounter issues (e.g., permission errors on newer Windows versions), ensure your script has screen capture permissions or try running it with administrator privileges.
- Full documentation: Pillow ImageGrab docs. For Windows-specific quirks, check GitHub issues if needed.