Create Unique Chinese New Year Phone Wallpapers with Python and PIL

Introduction

Hello, I am Zhu Xiao Wu. With the upcoming New Year, you can create a festive, personalized phone wallpaper using Python.

Choosing a Template

First, select an existing wallpaper template. Below are several example templates:

Using Pillow (PIL)

Pillow is a third‑party Python library for image processing. The core class Image provides methods such as save(filename, format), open(filename, mode), and paste(region, box, mask).

Simple Text Overlay Example

from PIL import Image, ImageDraw, ImageFont

a = '小王小王'
font = ImageFont.truetype('simhei.ttf', 100)  # black font
img = Image.open('底图.png')
draw = ImageDraw.Draw(img)

draw.text((200, 700), a, (0, 0, 0), font=font)
img.show()
img.save('壁纸.png')

The above code adds black text to the template, but the result looks plain.

Rotating the Image

Since rotating text directly is difficult, we rotate the whole image:

from PIL import Image, ImageDraw, ImageFont

a = '小王小王'
font = ImageFont.truetype('simhei.ttf', 100)
img = Image.open('底图.png')
img = img.rotate(-15)  # rotate image
draw = ImageDraw.Draw(img)

draw.text((200, 700), a, (0, 0, 0), font=font)
img.show()
img.save('壁纸.png')

This produces a tilted background, but not the desired slanted text effect.

Creating a Transparent Text Layer

The solution is to draw the text on a transparent image, rotate that image, and paste it onto the colored background.

from PIL import Image, ImageDraw, ImageFont

a = '小王小王'
b = '可爱大王'
font = ImageFont.truetype('hylx.ttf', 180)

# Transparent layer
img1 = Image.open('透明.png').convert('RGBA')
draw = ImageDraw.Draw(img1)

draw.text((250, 550), a, (255, 243, 211), font=font)
draw.text((350, 800), b, (255, 243, 211), font=font)
img1 = img1.rotate(15)

# Background layer
img2 = Image.open('底图.png').convert('RGBA')
img2.paste(img1, (0, 0), img1)
img2.show()
img2.save('壁纸.png')

The final wallpaper shows slanted, colorful text on the festive background:

Conclusion

You can experiment with different fonts, colors, and templates to create a personalized New Year wallpaper. The same technique applies to any custom image generation task using Python and Pillow.