The Python Imaging Library
$Id: //modules/pil/CHANGES-114#9 $

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: PIL wouldn't be what it is without the help of,
among others: David Ascher, Phil Austin, Larry Bates, Anthony Baxter,
Denis Benoit, Jan Blom, Duncan Booth, Roger Burnham, Gene Cash, Kevin
Cazabon, Fred Clare, Greg Coats, Greg Couch, Bill Crutchfield, Abel
Deuring, Tim Docker, Fred Drake, Graham Dumpleton, Matthew Ellis,
Robin Friedrich, Peier Paolo Glave, Markus Gritsch, Mark Hammond,
Bernhard Herzog, Rob Hooft, Jack Jansen, Bill Janssen, Edward Jones,
Richard Jones, Robert Kern, Bob Klimek, Andrew Kuchling, Andrew
MacIntyre, Gordon McMillan, Skip Montanaro, Fredrik Nehr, Håkan
Karlsson, Robert Kern, Matthias Klose, Magnus Källström, Hamish
Lawson, Eric Raymond, Bertil Reinhammar, Toby Sargeant, Barry Scott,
Les Schaffer, Joel Shprentz, Klamer Shutte, D. Alan Stewart, Perry
Stoll, Paul Svensson, Ivan Tkatchev, Rune Uhlin, Dmitry Vasiliev,
Sasha Voynow, Charles Waldman, and Dan Wolfe.

*** Changes from release 1.1 to 1.1.4 ***

(1.1.4 final released)

+ Fixed ImageTk build problem on Unix.

(1.1.4b2 released)

+ Improved building on Mac OS X (from Jack Jansen).

+ Improved building on Windows with MinGW (from Klamer Shutte).

+ If no font is specified, ImageDraw now uses the embedded default
  font.  Use the "load" or "truetype" methods to load a real font.

+ Added embedded default font to the ImageFont module (currently
  an 8-pixel Courier font, taken from the X window distribution).

(1.1.4b1 released)

+ Added experimental EXIF support for JPEG files.  To extract EXIF
  information from a JPEG file, open the file as usual, and call the
  "_getexif" method.  If successful, this method returns a dictionary
  mapping EXIF TIFF tags to values.  If the file does not contain EXIF
  data, the "_getexif" method returns None.

  The "ExifTags" module contains a dictionary mapping tags to tag
  names.

  This interface will most likely change in future versions.

+ Fixed a bug when using the "transparency" option with the GIF
  writer.

+ Added limited support for "bitfield compression" in BMP files
  and DIB buffers, for 15-bit, 16-bit, and 32-bit images.  This
  also fixes a problem with ImageGrab module when copying screen-
  dumps from the clipboard on 15/16/32-bit displays.

+ Added experimental WAL (Quake 2 textures) loader.  To use this
  loader, import WalImageFile and call the "open" method in that
  module.

(1.1.4a4 released)

+ Added updated SANE driver (Andrew Kuchling, Abel Deuring)

+ Use Python's "mmap" module on non-Windows platforms to read some
  uncompressed formats using memory mapping.  Also added a "frombuffer"
  function that allows you to access the contents of an existing string
  or buffer object as if it were an image object.

+ Fixed a memory leak that could appear when processing mode "P"
  images (from Pier Paolo Glave)

+ Ignore Unicode characters in the BDF loader (from Graham Dumpleton)

(1.1.4a3 released; windows only)

+ Added experimental RGBA-on-RGB drawing support.  To use RGBA
  colours on an RGB image, pass "RGBA" as the second string to
  the ImageDraw.Draw constructor.

+ Added support for non-ASCII strings (Latin-1) and Unicode
  to the truetype font renderer.

+ The ImageWin "Dib" object can now be constructed directly from
  an image object.

+ The ImageWin module now allows you use window handles as well
  as device contexts.  To use a window handle, wrap the handle in
  an ImageWin.HWND object, and pass in this object instead of the
  device context.

(1.1.4a2 released)

+ Improved support for 16-bit unsigned integer images (mode "I;16").
  This includes TIFF reader support, and support for "getextrema"
  and "point" (from Klamer Shutte).

+ Made the BdfFontFile reader a bit more robust (from Kevin Cazabon
  and Dmitry Vasiliev)

+ Changed TIFF writer to always write Compression tag, even when
  using the default compression (from Greg Couch).

+ Added "show" support for Mac OS X (from Dan Wolfe).

+ Added clipboard support to the "ImageGrab" module (Windows only).
  The "grabclipboard" function returns an Image object, a list of
  filenames (not in 1.1.4), or None if neither was found.

(1.1.4a1 released)

+ Improved support for drawing RGB data in palette images.  You can
  now use RGB tuples or colour names (see below) when drawing in a
  mode "P" image.  The drawing layer automatically assigns color
  indexes, as long as you don't use more than 256 unique colours.

+ Moved self test from MiniTest/test.py to ./selftest.py.

+ Added support for CSS3-style color strings to most places that
  accept colour codes/tuples.  This includes the "ImageDraw" module,
  the Image "new" function, and the Image "paste" method.

  Colour strings can use one of the following formats: "#f00",
  "#ff0000", "rgb(255,0,0)", "rgb(100%,0%,0%)", "hsl(0, 100%, 50%)",
  or "red" (most X11-style colour names are supported).  See the
  documentation for the "ImageColor" module for more information.

+ Fixed DCX decoder (based on input from Larry Bates)

+ Added "IptcImagePlugin.getiptcinfo" helper to extract IPTC/NAA
  newsphoto properties from JPEG, TIFF, or IPTC files.

+ Support for TrueType/OpenType fonts has been added to
  the standard distribution.  You need the freetype 2.0
  library.

+ Made the PCX reader a bit more robust when reading 2-bit
  and 4-bit PCX images with odd image sizes.

+ Added "Kernel" class to the ImageFilter module.  This class
  allows you to filter images with user-defined 3x3 and 5x5
  convolution kernels.

+ Added "putdata" support for mode "I", "F" and "RGB".

+ The GIF writer now supports the transparency option (from
  Denis Benoit).

+ A HTML version of the module documentation is now shipped
  with the source code distribution.  You'll find the files in
  the Doc subdirectory.

+ Added support for Palm pixmaps (from Bill Janssen).  This
  change was listed for 1.1.3, but the "PalmImagePlugin" driver
  didn't make it into the distribution.

+ Improved decoder error messages.

(1.1.3 final released)

+ Made setup.py look for old versions of zlib.  For some back-
  ground, see: http://www.gzip.org/zlib/advisory-2002-03-11.txt

(1.1.3c2 released)

+ Added setup.py file (tested on Unix and Windows).  You still
  need to build libImaging/imaging.lib in the traditional way,
  but the setup.py script takes care of the rest.

  The old Setup.in/Makefile.pre.in build method is still
  supported.

+ Fixed segmentation violation in ANTIALIAS filter (an internal
  buffer wasn't properly allocated).

(1.1.3c1 released)

+ Added ANTIALIAS downsampling filter for high-quality "resize"
  and "thumbnail" operations.  Also added filter option to the
  "thumbnail" operation; the default value is NEAREST, but this
  will most likely change in future versions.

+ Fixed plugin loader to be more robust if the __file__
  variable isn't set.

+ Added seek/tell support (for layers) to the PhotoShop
  loader.  Layer 0 is the main image.

+ Added new (but experimental) "ImageOps" module, which provides
  shortcuts for commonly used operations on entire images.

+ Don't mess up when loading PNG images if the decoder leaves
  data in the output buffer.  This could cause internal errors
  on some PNG images, with some versions of ZLIB. (Bug report
  and patch provided by Bernhard Herzog.)

+ Don't mess up on Unicode filenames.

+ Don't mess up when drawing on big endian platforms.

+ Made the TIFF loader a bit more robust; it can now read some
  more slightly broken TIFF files (based on input from Ted Wright,
  Bob Klimek, and D. Alan Stewart)

+ Added OS/2 EMX build files (from Andrew MacIntyre)

+ Change "ImageFont" to reject image files if they don't have the
  right mode.  Older versions could leak memory for "P" images.
  (Bug reported by Markus Gritsch).
  
(1.2a3 and 1.2b1 released)
 
+ Renamed some internal functions to avoid potential build
  problem on Mac OS X.

+ Added DL_EXPORT where relevant (for Cygwin, based on input
  from Robert Yodlowski)

+ (re)moved bogus __init__ call in BdfFontFile (bug spotted
  by Fred Clare)

+ Added "ImageGrab" support (Windows only)

+ Added support for XBM hotspots (based on code contributed by
  Bernhard Herzog).

+ Added write support for more TIFF tags, namely the Artist,
  Copyright, DateTime, ResolutionUnit, Software, XResolution and
  YResolution tags (from Greg Couch)

+ Added TransposedFont wrapper to ImageFont module

+ Added "optimize" flag to GIF encoder.  If optimize is present
  and non-zero, PIL will work harder to create a small file.

+ Raise "EOFError" (not IndexError) when reading beyond the
  end of a TIFF sequence.

+ Support rewind ("seek(0)") for GIF and TIFF sequences.

+ Load grayscale GIF images as mode "L"

(1.2a2 released)

+ Added DPI read/write support to the JPEG codec.  The decoder
  sets the info["dpi"] attribute for JPEG files with JFIF dpi
  settings.  The encoder uses the "dpi" option:

      im = Image.open("file.jpg")
      dpi = im.info["dpi"] # raises KeyError if DPI not known
      im.save("out.jpg", dpi=dpi)

  Note that PIL doesn't always preserve the "info" attribute
  for normal image operations.

(1.1.2c1 and 1.1.2 final released)

+ Adapted to Python 2.1.  Among other things, all uses of the
  "regex" module has been repleased with "re".

+ Fixed attribute error when reading large PNG files (this bug
  was introduced in maintenance code released after the 1.1.1
  release)

+ Ignore non-string objects in sys.path

+ Fixed Image.transform(EXTENT) for negative xoffsets

+ Fixed loading of image plugins if PIL is installed as a package.
  (The plugin loader now always looks in the directory where the
  Image.py module itself is found, even if that directory isn't on
  the standard search path)

+ The Png plugin has been added to the list of preloaded standard
  formats

+ Fixed bitmap/text drawing in fill mode.

+ Fixed "getextrema" to work also for multiband images.

+ Added transparency support for L and P images to the PNG codec.

+ Improved support for read-only images.  The "load" method now
  sets the "readonly" attribute for memory-mapped images.  Operations
  that modifies an image in place (such as "paste" and drawing operations)
  creates an in-memory copy of the image, if necessary.  (before this
  change, any attempt to modify a memory-mapped image resulted in a
  core dump...)

+ Added special cases for lists everywhere PIL expects a sequence.
  This should speed up things like "putdata" and drawing operations.

+ The Image.offset method is deprecated.  Use the ImageChops.offset
  function instead. 

+ Changed ImageChops operators to copy palette and info dictionary
  from the first image argument.

(1.1.1 released)

+ Additional fixes for Python 1.6/2.0, including TIFF "save" bug. 

+ Changed "init" to properly load plugins when PIL is used as a
  package.

+ Fixed broken "show" method (on Unix)

*** Changes from release 1.0 to 1.1 ***

+ Adapted to Python 1.6 ("append" and other method changes)

+ Fixed Image.paste when pasting with solid colour and matte
  layers ("L" or "RGBA" masks) (bug reported by Robert Kern)

+ To make it easier to distribute prebuilt versions of PIL,
  the tkinit binding stuff has been moved to a separate
  extension module, named "_imagingtk".

*** Changes from release 0.3b2 to 1.0 final ***

+ If there's no 16-bit integer (like on a Cray T3E), set
  INT16 to the smallest integer available.  Most of the
  library works just fine anyway (from Bill Crutchfield)

+ Tweaks to make drawing work on big-endian platforms.

(1.0c2 released)

+ If PIL is built with the WITH_TKINTER flag, ImageTk can
  automatically hook into a standard Tkinter build.  You
  no longer need to build your own Tkinter to use the
  ImageTk module.

  The old way still works, though.  For more information,
  see Tk/install.txt.

+ Some tweaks to ImageTk to support multiple Tk interpreters
  (from Greg Couch).

+ ImageFont "load_path" now scans directory mentioned in .pth
  files (from Richard Jones).

(1.0c1 released)

+ The TIFF plugin has been rewritten.  The new plugin fully
  supports all major PIL image modes (including F and I).

+ The ImageFile module now includes a Parser class, which can
  be used to incrementally decode an image file (while down-
  loading it from the net, for example).  See the handbook for
  details.

+ "show" now converts non-standard modes to "L" or "RGB" (as
  appropriate), rather than writing weird things to disk for
  "xv" to choke upon. (bug reported by Les Schaffer).

(1.0b2 released)

+ Major speedups for rotate, transform(EXTENT), and transform(AFFINE)
  when using nearest neighbour resampling.

+ Modified ImageDraw to be compatible with the Arrow graphics
  interface.  See the handbook for details.

+ PIL now automatically loads file codecs when used as a package
  (from The Dragon De Monsyne).  Also included an __init__.py file
  in the standard distribution.

+ The GIF encoder has been modified to produce much smaller files.

  PIL now uses a run-length encoding method to encode GIF files.
  On a random selection of GIF images grabbed from the web, this
  version makes the images about twice as large as the original
  LZW files, where the earlier version made them over 5 times
  larger.  YMMV, of course.

+ Added PCX write support (works with "1", "P", "L", and "RGB")

+ Added "bitmap" and "textsize" methods to ImageDraw.

+ Improved font rendering code.  Fixed a bug or two, and moved
  most of the time critical stuff to C.

+ Removed "bdf2pil.py".  Use "pilfont.py" instead!

+ Improved 16-bit support (still experimental, though).

  The following methods now support "I;16" and "I;16B" images:
  "getpixel", "copy", "convert" (to and from mode "I"), "resize",
  "rotate", and "transform" with nearest neighbour filters, and
  "save" using the IM format.  The "new" and "open" functions
  also work as expected.  On Windows, 16-bit files are memory
  mapped.

  NOTE: ALL other operations are still UNDEFINED on 16-bit images.

+ The "paste" method now supports constant sources.

  Just pass a colour value (a number or a tuple, depending on
  the target image mode) instead of the source image.

  This was in fact implemented in an inefficient way in
  earlier versions (the "paste" method generated a temporary
  source image if you passed it a colour instead of an image).
  In this version, this is handled on the C level instead.

+ Added experimental "RGBa" support.

  An "RGBa" image is an RGBA image where the colour components
  have have been premultipled with the alpha value.  PIL allows
  you to convert an RGBA image to an RGBa image, and to paste
  RGBa images on top of RGB images.  Since this saves a bunch
  of multiplications and shifts, it is typically about twice
  as fast an ordinary RGBA paste.

+ Eliminated extra conversion step when pasting "RGBA" or "RGBa"
  images on top of "RGB" images.

+ Fixed Image.BICUBIC resampling for "RGB" images.

+ Fixed PCX image file handler to properly read 8-bit PCX
  files (bug introduced in 1.0b1, reported by Bernhard
  Herzog)

+ Fixed PSDraw "image" method to restore the coordinate
  system.

+ Fixed "blend" problem when applied to images that was
  not already loaded (reported by Edward C. Jones)

+ Fixed -f option to "pilconvert.py" (from Anthony Baxter)

(1.0b1 released)

+ Added Toby J. Sargeant's quantization package.  To enable
  quantization, use the "palette" option to "convert":

	imOut = im.convert("P", palette=Image.ADAPTIVE)

  This can be used with "L", "P", and "RGB" images.  In this
  version, dithering cannot be used with adaptive palettes.

  Note: ADAPTIVE currently maps to median cut quantization
  with 256 colours.  The quantization package also contains
  a maximum coverage quantizer, which will be supported by
  future versions of PIL.

+ Added Eric S. Raymond's "pildriver" image calculator to the
  distribution.  See the docstring for more information.

+ The "offset" method no longer dumps core if given positive
  offsets (from Charles Waldman).

+ Fixed a resource leak that could cause ImageWin to run out of
  GDI resources (from Roger Burnham).

+ Added "arc", "chord", and "pieslice" methods to ImageDraw (inspired
  by code contributed by Richard Jones).

+ Added experimental 16-bit support, via modes "I;16" (little endian
  data) and "I;16B" (big endian).  Only a few methods properly support
  such images (see above).

+ Added XV thumbnail file handler (from Gene Cash).

+ Fixed BMP image file handler to handle palette images with small
  palettes (from Rob Hooft).

+ Fixed Sun raster file handler for palette images (from Charles
  Waldman).

+ Improved various internal error messages.

+ Fixed Path constructor to handle arbitrary sequence objects.  This
  also affects the ImageDraw class (from Richard Jones).

+ Fixed a bug in JpegDecode that caused PIL to report "decoder error
  -2" for some progressive JPEG files (reported by Magnus Källström,
  who also provided samples).

+ Fixed a bug in JpegImagePlugin that caused PIL to hang when loading
  JPEG files using 16-bit quantization tables.

+ The Image "transform" method now supports Image.QUAD transforms.
  The data argument is an 8-tuple giving the upper left, lower
  left, lower right, and upper right corner of the source quadri-
  lateral.  Also added Image.MESH transform which takes a list
  of quadrilaterals.

+ The Image "resize", "rotate", and "transform" methods now support
  Image.BILINEAR (2x2) and Image.BICUBIC (4x4) resampling filters.
  Filters can be used with all transform methods.

+ The ImageDraw "rectangle" method now includes both the right
  and the bottom edges when drawing filled rectangles.

+ The TGA decoder now works properly for runlength encoded images 
  which have more than one byte per pixel.

+ "getbands" on an YCbCr image now returns ("Y", "Cb", "Cr")

+ Some file drivers didn't handle the optional "modify" argument
  to the load method.  This resulted in exceptions when you used
  "paste" (and other methods that modify an image in place) on a
  newly opened file.

*** Changes from release 0.2 (b5) to 0.3 (b2) ***

(0.3b2 released)

The test suite includes 825 individual tests.

+ An Image "getbands" method has been added.  It returns a tuple
  containing the individual band names for this image.  To figure
  out how many bands an image has, use "len(im.getbands())".

+ An Image "putpixel" method has been added.

+ The Image "point" method can now be used to convert "L" images
  to any other format, via a lookup table.  That table should
  contain 256 values for each band in the output image.

+ Some file drivers (including FLI/FLC, GIF, and IM) accidently
  overwrote the offset method with an internal attribute.  All
  drivers have been updated to use private attributes where
  possible.

+ The Image "histogram" method now works for "I" and "F" images.
  For these modes, PIL divides the range between the min and
  max values used in the image into 256 bins.  You can also
  pass in your own min and max values via the "extrema" option:

	h = im.histogram(extrema=(0, 255))

+ An Image "getextrema" method has been added.  It returns the
  min and max values used in the image. In this release, this
  works for single band images only.

+ Changed the PNG driver to load and save mode "I" images as
  16-bit images.  When saving, values outside the range 0..65535
  are clipped.

+ Fixed ImageFont.py to work with the new "pilfont" compiler.

+ Added JPEG "save" and "draft" support for mode "YCbCr" images.
  Note that if you save an "YCbCr" image as a JPEG file and read
  it back, it is read as an RGB file.  To get around this, you
  can use the "draft" method:

	im = Image.open("color.jpg")
	im.draft("YCbCr", im.size)

+ Read "RGBA" TGA images.  Also fixed the orientation bug; all
  images should now come out the right way.

+ Changed mode name (and internal representation) from "YCrCb"
  to "YCbCr" (!)
  *** WARNING: MAY BREAK EXISTING CODE ***

(0.3b1 released)

The test suite includes 750 individual tests.

+ The "pilfont" package is now included in the standard PIL
  distribution.  The pilfont utility can be used to convert
  X BDF and PCF raster font files to a format understood by
  the ImageFont module.

+ GIF files are now interlaced by default.  To write a
  non-interlaced file, pass interlace=0 to the "save"
  method.

+ The default string format has changed for the "fromstring"
  and "tostring" methods.
  *** WARNING: MAY BREAK EXISTING CODE ***

  NOTE: If no extra arguments are given, the first line in
  the string buffer is the top line of the image, instead of
  the bottom line.  For RGB images, the string now contains
  3 bytes per pixel instead of 4.  These changes were made
  to make the methods compatible with the "fromstring"
  factory function.

  To get the old behaviour, use the following syntax:

	data = im.tostring("raw", "RGBX", 0, -1)
	im.fromstring(data, "raw", "RGBX", 0, -1)

+ "new" no longer gives a MemoryError if the width or height
  is zero (this only happened on platforms where malloc(0)
  or calloc(0) returns NULL).

+ "new" now adds a default palette object to "P" images.

+ You can now convert directly between all modes supported by
  PIL.  When converting colour images to "P", PIL defaults to
  a "web" palette and dithering.  When converting greyscale
  images to "1", PIL uses a thresholding and dithering.

+ Added a "dither" option to "convert".  By default, "convert"
  uses floyd-steinberg error diffusion for "P" and "1" targets,
  so this option is only used to *disable* dithering. Allowed
  values are NONE (no dithering) or FLOYDSTEINBERG (default).

	imOut = im.convert("P", dither=Image.NONE)

+ Added a full set of "I" decoders.  You can use "fromstring"
  (and file decoders) to read any standard integer type as an
  "I" image.

+ Added some support for "YCbCr" images (creation, conversion
  from/to "L" and "RGB", IM YCC load/save)

+ "getpixel" now works properly with fractional coordinates.

+ ImageDraw "setink" now works with "I", "F", "RGB", "RGBA",
  "RGBX", "CMYK", and "YCbCr" images.

+ ImImagePlugin no longer attaches palettes to "RGB" images.

+ Various minor fixes.

(0.3a4 released)

+ Added experimental IPTC/NAA support.

+ Eliminated AttributeError exceptions after "crop" (from
  Skip Montanaro)

+ Reads some uncompressed formats via memory mapping (this
  is currently supported on Win32 only)

+ Fixed some last minute glitches in the last alpha release
  (Types instead of types in Image.py, version numbers, etc.)

+ Eliminated some more bogus compiler warnings.

+ Various fixes to make PIL compile and run smoother on Macs
  (from Jack Jansen).

+ Fixed "fromstring" and "tostring" for mode "I" images.

(0.3a3 released)

The test suite includes 530 individual tests.

+ Eliminated unexpected side-effect in "paste" with matte.  "paste"
  now works properly also if compiled with "gcc".

+ Adapted to Python 1.5 (build issues only)

+ Fixed the ImageDraw "point" method to draw also the last
  point (!).

+ Added "I" and "RGBX" support to Image.new.

+ The plugin path is now properly prepended to the module search
  path when a plugin module is imported.

+ Added "draw" method to the ImageWin.Dib class.  This is used by
  Topaz to print images on Windows printers.

+ "convert" now supports conversions from "P" to "1" and "F".

+ "paste" can now take a colour instead of an image as the first argument.
  The colour must match the colour argument given to the new function, and
  match the mode of the target image.

+ Fixed "paste" to allow a mask also for mode "F" images.

+ The BMP driver now saves mode "1" images.  When loading images, the mode
  is set to "L" for 8-bit files with greyscale palettes, and to "P" for
  other 8-bit files.

+ The IM driver now reads and saves "1" images (file modes "0 1" or "L 1").

+ The JPEG and GIF drivers now saves "1" images.  For JPEG, the image
  is saved as 8-bit greyscale (it will load as mode "L").  For GIF, the
  image will be loaded as a "P" image.

+ Fixed a potential buffer overrun in the GIF encoder.

(0.3a2 released)

The test suite includes 400 individual tests.

+ Improvements to the test suite revealed a number of minor bugs, which
  are all fixed.  Note that crop/paste, 32-bit ImageDraw, and ImageFont
  are still weak spots in this release.

+ Added "putpalette" method to the Image class.  You can use this
  to add or modify the palette for "P" and "L" images.  If a palette
  is added to an "L" image, it is automatically converted to a "P"
  image.

+ Fixed ImageDraw to properly handle 32-bit image memories
  ("RGB", "RGBA", "CMYK", "F")

+ Fixed "fromstring" and "tostring" not to mess up the mode attribute
  in default mode.

+ Changed ImPlatform.h to work on CRAY's (don't have one at home, so I
  haven't tried it).  The previous version assumed that either "short"
  or "int" were 16-bit wide. PIL still won't compile on platforms where
  neither "short", "int" nor "long" are 32-bit wide.

+ Added file= and data= keyword arguments to PhotoImage and BitmapImage.
  This allows you to use them as drop-in replacements for the corre-
  sponding Tkinter classes.

+ Removed bogus references to the crack coder (ImagingCrack).

(0.3a1 released)

+ Make sure image is loaded in "tostring".

+ Added floating point packer (native 32-bit floats only).

*** Changes from release 0.1b1 to 0.2 (b5) ***

+ Modified "fromstring" and "tostring" methods to use file codecs.
  Also added "fromstring" factory method to create an image directly
  from data in a string.

+ Added support for 32-bit floating point images (mode "F").  You
  can convert between "L" and "F" images, and apply a subset of the
  available image processing methods on the "F" image.  You can also
  read virtually any data format into a floating point image memory;
  see the section on "Decoding Floating Point Data" in the handbook
  for more information.

(0.2b5 released; on windows only)

+ Fixed the tobitmap() method to work properly for small bitmaps.

+ Added RMS and standard deviation to the ImageStat.Stat class.  Also
  modified the constructor to take an optional feature mask, and also
  to accept either an image or a list containing the histogram data.

+ The BitmapImage code in ImageTk can now use a special bitmap
  decoder, which has to be patched into Tk.  See the "Tk/pilbitmap.txt"
  file for details.  If not installed, bitmaps are transferred to Tk as
  XBM strings.

+ The PhotoImage code in ImageTk now uses a Tcl command ("PyImagingPaste")
  instead of a special image type.  This gives somewhat better performance,
  and also allows PIL to support transparency.
  *** WARNING: TKAPPINIT MUST BE MODIFIED ***

+ ImageTk now honours the alpha layer in RGBA images.  Only fully
  transparent pixels are made transparent (that is, the alpha layer
  is treated as a mask).  To treat the alpha laters as a matte, you
  must paste the image on the background before handing it over to
  ImageTk.

+ Added McIdas reader (supports 8-bit images only).

+ PIL now preloads drivers for BMP, GIF, JPEG, PPM, and TIFF.  As
  long as you only load and save these formats, you don't have to
  wait for a full scan for drivers.  To force scanning, call the
  Image.init() function.

+ The "seek" and "tell" methods are now always available, also for
  single-frame images.

+ Added optional mask argument to histogram method.  The mask may
  be an "1" or "L" image with the same size as the original image.
  Only pixels where the mask is non-zero are included in the
  histogram.

+ The "paste" method now allows you to specify only the lower left
  corner (a 2-tuple), instead of the full region (a 4-tuple).

+ Reverted to old plugin scanning model; now scans all directory
  names in the path when looking for plugins.

+ Added PIXAR raster support.  Only uncompressed ("dumped") RGB
  images can currently be read (based on information provided
  by Greg Coats).

+ Added FlashPix (FPX) read support.  Reads all pixel formats, but
  only the highest resolution is read, and the viewing transform is
  currently ignored.

+ Made PNG encoding somewhat more efficient in "optimize" mode; a
  bug in 0.2b4 didn't enable all predictor filters when optimized
  storage were requested.

+ Added Microsoft Image Composer (MIC) read support.  When opened,
  the first sprite in the file is loaded.  You can use the seek method
  to load additional sprites from the file.

+ Properly reads "P" and "CMYK" PSD images.

+ "pilconvert" no longer optimizes by default; use the -o option to
  make the file as small as possible (at the expense of speed); use
  the -q option to set the quality when compressing to JPEG.

+ Fixed "crop" not to drop the palette for "P" images.

+ Added and verified FLC support.

+ Paste with "L" or "RGBA" alpha is now several times faster on most
  platforms.

+ Changed Image.new() to initialize the image to black, as described
  in the handbook.  To get an uninitialized image, use None as the
  colour.

+ Fixed the PDF encoder to produce a valid header; Acrobat no longer
  complains when you load PDF images created by PIL.

+ PIL only scans fully-qualified directory names in the path when
  looking for plugins.
  *** WARNING: MAY BREAK EXISTING CODE ***

+ Faster implementation of "save" used when filename is given,
  or when file object has "fileno" and "flush" methods.

+ Fixed the "crop" method not to crash if the region extends
  outside the source image.

+ Eliminated a massive memory leak in the "save" function.

+ The GIF decoder doesn't crash if the code size is set to an illegal
  value.  This could happen since another bug didn't handle local
  palettes properly if they didn't have the same size as the
  global palette (not very common).

+ Added predictor support (TIFF 6.0 section 14) to the TIFF decoder.

+ Fixed palette and padding problems in BMP driver.  Now properly
  writes "1", "L", "P" and "RGB" images.

+ Fixed getpixel()/getdata() to return correct pixel values.

+ Added PSD (PhotoShop) read support.  Reads both uncompressed
  and compressed images of most types.

+ Added GIF write support (writes "uncompressed" GIF files only,
  due to unresolvable licensing issues).  The "gifmaker.py" script
  can be used to create GIF animations.

+ Reads 8-bit "L" and "P" TGA images.  Also reads 16-bit "RGB"
  images.

+ Added FLI read support.  This driver has only been tested
  on a few FLI samples.

+ Reads 2-bit and 4-bit PCX images.

+ Added MSP read and write support.  Both version 1 and 2 can be
  read, but only version 1 (uncompressed) files are written.

+ Fixed a bug in the FLI/FLC identification code that caused the
  driver to raise an exception when parsing valid FLI/FLC files.

+ Improved performance when loading file format plugins, and when
  opening files.

+ Added GIF animation support, via the "seek" and "tell" methods.
  You can use "player.py" to play an animated GIF file.

+ Removed MNG support, since the spec is changing faster than I
  can change the code.  I've added support for the experimental
  ARG format instead.  Contact me for more information on this
  format.

+ Added keyword options to the "save" method.  The following options
  are currently supported:

      format	option		description
      --------------------------------------------------------
      JPEG	optimize	minimize output file at the
				expense of compression speed.

      JPEG	progressive	enable progressive output. the
				option value is ignored.

      JPEG	quality		set compression quality (1-100).
				the default value is 75.

      JPEG	smooth		smooth dithered images.  value
				is strengh (1-100).  default is
				off (0).

      PNG	optimize	minimize output file at the
				expense of compression speed.

  Expect more options in future releases.  Also note that
  file writers silently ignore unknown options.

+ Plugged memory leaks in the PNG and TIFF decoders.

+ Added PNG write support.

+ (internal) RGB unpackers and converters now set the pad byte
  to 255 (full opacity).

+ Properly handles the "transparency" property for GIF, PNG
  and XPM files.

+ Added a "putalpha" method, allowing you to attach a "1" or "L"
  image as the alpha layer to an "RGBA" image.

+ Various improvements to the sample scripts:

  "pilconvert"  Carries out some extra tricks in order to make
		the resulting file as small as possible.

  "explode"	(NEW) Split an image sequence into individual frames.

  "gifmaker"	(NEW) Convert a sequence file into a GIF animation.
		Note that the GIF encoder create "uncompressed" GIF
		files, so animations created by this script are
		rather large (typically 2-5 times the compressed
		sizes).

  "image2py"	(NEW) Convert a single image to a python module.  See
		comments in this script for details.

  "player"	If multiple images are given on the command line,
		they are interpreted as frames in a sequence.  The
		script assumes that they all have the same size.
		Also note that this script now can play FLI/FLC
		and GIF animations.

		This player can also execute embedded Python
		animation applets (ARG format only).

  "viewer"	Transparent images ("P" with transparency property,
		and "RGBA") are superimposed on the standard Tk back-
		ground.

+ Fixed colour argument to "new".  For multilayer images, pass a
  tuple: (Red, Green, Blue), (Red, Green, Blue, Alpha), or (Cyan,
  Magenta, Yellow, Black).

+ Added XPM (X pixmap) read support.

(0.2b3 released)

+ Added MNG (multi-image network graphics) read support.  "Ming"
  is a proposed animation standard, based on the PNG file format.

  You can use the "player" sample script to display some flavours
  of this format.  The MNG standard is still under development, 
  as is this driver.  More information, including sample files,
  can be found at <ftp://swrinde.nde.swri.edu/pub/mng>

+ Added a "verify" method to images loaded from file.  This method
  scans the file for errors, without actually decoding the image
  data, and raises a suitable exception if it finds any problems.
  Currently implemented for PNG and MNG files only.

+ Added support for interlaced GIF images.

+ Added PNG read support -- if linked with the ZLIB compression library,
  PIL reads all kinds of PNG images, except interlaced files.

+ Improved PNG identification support -- doesn't mess up on unknown
  chunks, identifies all possible PNG modes, and verifies checksum
  on PNG header chunks.

+ Added an experimental reader for placable Windows Meta Files (WMF).
  This reader is still very incomplete, but it illustrates how PIL's
  drawing capabilities can be used to render vector and metafile
  formats.

+ Added restricted drivers for images from Image Tools (greyscale
  only) and LabEye/IFUNC (common interchange modes only).

+ Some minor improvements to the sample scripts provided in the
  "Scripts" directory.

+ The test images have been moved to the "Images" directory.

(0.2b2 released)
(0.2b1 released; Windows only)

+ Fixed filling of complex polygons.  The ImageDraw "line" and
  "polygon" methods also accept Path objects.

+ The ImageTk "PhotoImage" object can now be constructed directly
  from an image.  You can also pass the object itself to Tkinter,
  instead of using the "image" attribute.  Finally, using "paste"
  on a displayed image automatically updates the display.

+ The ImageTk "BitmapImage" object allows you to create transparent
  overlays from 1-bit images.  You can pass the object itself to
  Tkinter.  The constructor takes the same arguments as the Tkinter
  BitmapImage class; use the "foreground" option to set the colour
  of the overlay.

+ Added a "putdata" method to the Image class.  This can be used to
  load a 1-layer image with data from a sequence object or a string.
  An optional floating point scale and offset can be used to adjust
  the data to fit into the 8-bit pixel range.  Also see the "getdata"
  method.

+ Added the EXTENT method to the Image "transform" method.  This can
  be used to quickly crop, stretch, shrink, or mirror a subregion
  from another image.

+ Adapted to Python 1.4.

+ Added a project makefile for Visual C++ 4.x.  This allows you to
  easily build a dynamically linked version of PIL for Windows 95
  and NT.

+ A Tk "booster" patch for Windows is available.  It gives dramatic
  performance improvements for some displays.  Has been tested with
  Tk 4.2 only, but is likely to work with Tk 4.1 as well.  See the Tk
  subdirectory for details.

+ You can now save 1-bit images in the XBM format.  In addition, the
  Image class now provides a "tobitmap" method which returns a string
  containing an XBM representation of the image.  Quite handy to use
  with Tk.

+ More conversions, including "RGB" to "1" and more.

(0.2a1 released)

+ Where earlier versions accepted lists, this version accepts arbitrary
  Python sequences (including strings, in some cases).  A few resource
  leaks were plugged in the process.

+ The Image "paste" method now allows the box to extend outside
  the target image.  The size of the box, the image to be pasted,
  and the optional mask must still match.

+ The ImageDraw module now supports filled polygons, outlined and
  filled ellipses, and text.  Font support is rudimentary, though.

+ The Image "point" method now takes an optional mode argument,
  allowing you to convert the image while translating it.  Currently,
  this can only be used to convert "L" or "P" images to "1" images
  (creating thresholded images or "matte" masks).

+ An Image "getpixel" method has been added.  For single band images,
  it returns the pixel value at a given position as an integer.
  For n-band images, it returns an n-tuple of integers.

+ An Image "getdata" method has been added.  It returns a sequence
  object representing the image as a 1-dimensional array.  Only len()
  and [] can be used with this sequence.  This method returns a
  reference to the existing image data, so changes in the image
  will be immediately reflected in the sequence object.

+ Fixed alignment problems in the Windows BMP writer.

+ If converting an "RGB" image to "RGB" or "L", you can give a second
  argument containing a colour conversion matrix.

+ An Image "getbbox" method has been added.  It returns the bounding
  box of data in an image, considering the value 0 as background.

+ An Image "offset" method has been added.  It returns a new image
  where the contents of the image have been offset the given distance
  in X and/or Y direction.  Data wraps between edges.

+ Saves PDF images.  The driver creates a binary PDF 1.1 files, using
  JPEG compression for "L", "RGB", and "CMYK" images, and hex encoding
  (same as for PostScript) for other formats.

+ The "paste" method now accepts "1" masks.  Zero means transparent,
  any other pixel value means opaque.  This is faster than using an
  "L" transparency mask.

+ Properly writes EPS files (and properly prints images to postscript
  printers as well).

+ Reads 4-bit BMP files, as well as 4 and 8-bit Windows ICO and CUR
  files.  Cursor animations are not supported.

+ Fixed alignment problems in the Sun raster loader.

+ Added "draft" and "thumbnail" methods.  The draft method is used
  to optimize loading of JPEG and PCD files, the thumbnail method is
  used to create a thumbnail representation of an image.

+ Added Windows display support, via the ImageWin class (see the
  handbook for details).

+ Added raster conversion for EPS files.  This requires GNU or Aladdin
  Ghostscript, and probably works on UNIX only.

+ Reads PhotoCD (PCD) images.  The base resolution (768x512) can be
  read from a PhotoCD file.

+ Eliminated some compiler warnings.  Bindings now compile cleanly in C++
  mode.  Note that the Imaging library itself must be compiled in C mode.

+ Added "bdf2pil.py", which converts BDF fonts into images with associated
  metrics.  This is definitely work in progress.  For info, see description
  in script for details.

+ Fixed a bug in the "ImageEnhance.py" module.

+ Fixed a bug in the netpbm save hack in "GifImagePlugin.py"

+ Fixed 90 and 270 degree rotation of rectangular images.

+ Properly reads 8-bit TIFF palette-color images.

+ Reads plane separated RGB and CMYK TIFF images.

+ Added driver debug mode.  This is enabled by setting Image.DEBUG
  to a non-zero value.  Try the -D option to "pilfile.py" and see what
  happens.

+ Don't crash on "atend" constructs in PostScript files.

+ Only the Image module imports _imaging directly.  Other modules
  should refer to the binding module as "Image.core".

*** Changes from release 0.0 to 0.1 (b1) ***

+ A handbook is available (distributed separately).

+ The coordinate system is changed so that (0,0) is now located
  in the upper left corner.  This is in compliancy with ISO 12087
  and 90% of all other image processing and graphics libraries.

+ Modes "1" (bilevel) and "P" (palette) have been introduced.  Note
  that bilevel images are stored with one byte per pixel.

+ The Image "crop" and "paste" methods now accepts None as the
  box argument, to refer to the full image (self, that is).

+ The Image "crop" method now works properly.

+ The Image "point" method is now available.  You can use either a
  lookup table or a function taking one argument.

+ The Image join function has been renamed to "merge".

+ An Image "composite" function has been added.  It is identical
  to copy() followed by paste(mask).

+ An Image "eval" function has been added.  It is currently identical
  to point(function); that is, only a single image can be processed.

+ A set of channel operations has been added.  See the "ImageChops"
  module, test_chops.py, and the handbook for details.

+ Added the "pilconvert" utility, which converts image files.  Note
  that the number of output formats are still quite restricted.

+ Added the "pilfile" utility, which quickly identifies image files
  (without loading them, in most cases).

+ Added the "pilprint" utility, which prints image files to Postscript
  printers.

+ Added a rudimentary version of the "pilview" utility, which is
  simple image viewer based on Tk.  Only File/Exit and Image/Next
  works properly.

+ An interface to Tk has been added.  See "Lib/ImageTk.py" and README
  for details.

+ An interface to Jack Jansen's Img library has been added (thanks to
  Jack).  This allows you to read images through the Img extensions file
  format handlers.  See the file "Lib/ImgExtImagePlugin.py" for details.

+ Postscript printing is provided through the PSDraw module.  See the
  handbook for details.
