Is there a way to outline text with a dark line in PIL?

Question

I\'m using python/PIL to write text on a set of PNG images. I was able to get the font I wanted, but I\'d like to now outline the text in black.

Answer 1

Check the stroke_width option, which implements stroke/border/outline effect. For shadow effect, you can draw with a small offset. Bellow is an example to add subtitle to image.

#!/usr/bin/env python
from PIL import Image, ImageDraw, ImageFont


def add_subtitle(
    bg,
    text="nice",
    xy=("center", 20),
    font="font/SourceHanSansSC-Regular.otf",
    font_size=53,
    font_color=(255, 255, 255),
    stroke=2,
    stroke_color=(0, 0, 0),
    shadow=(4, 4),
    shadow_color=(0, 0, 0),
):
    """draw subtitle on image by pillow
    Args:
        bg(PIL image): image to add subtitle
        text(str): subtitle
        xy(tuple): absolute top left location of subtitle
        ...: extra style of subtitle
    Returns:
        bg(PIL image): image with subtitle
    """
    stroke_width = stroke
    xy = list(xy)
    W, H = bg.width, bg.height
    font = ImageFont.truetype(str(font), font_size)
    w, h = font.getsize(text, stroke_width=stroke_width)
    if xy[0] == "center":
        xy[0] = (W - w) // 2
    if xy[1] == "center":
        xy[1] = (H - h) // 2
    draw = ImageDraw.Draw(bg)
    if shadow:
        draw.text(
            (xy[0] + shadow[0], xy[1] + shadow[1]), text, font=font, fill=shadow_color
        )
    draw.text(
        (xy[0], xy[1]),
        text,
        font=font,
        fill=font_color,
        stroke_width=stroke_width,
        stroke_fill=stroke_color,
    )
    return bg


if __name__ == "__main__":
    bg = Image.open("./Screenshot_20200626-131218.png")
    bg = add_subtitle(bg)
    bg.save("out.png")