Processing Images, Excel, and Word Documents with Python (Pillow, openpyxl, python-docx)

Python can be used to manipulate images and office documents even though the standard library lacks direct support; third‑party modules fill the gap.

Image Operations

Understanding basic concepts such as RGB color model and pixels is essential. The RGB values for common colors are listed in a table.

Install Pillow, the actively maintained fork of PIL, with:

pip install pillow

The core class is Image . Example usage:

>>> from PIL import Image
>>> image = Image.open('./res/guido.jpg')
>>> image.format, image.size, image.mode
('JPEG', (500, 750), 'RGB')
>>> image.show()

Common operations include:

Crop an image: >>> rect = 80, 20, 310, 360 >>> image.crop(rect).show()

Create a thumbnail: >>> size = 128, 128 >>> image.thumbnail(size) >>> image.show()

Resize and paste another image: >>> image1 = Image.open('./res/luohao.png') >>> image2 = Image.open('./res/guido.jpg') >>> rect = 80, 20, 310, 360 >>> guido_head = image2.crop(rect) >>> width, height = guido_head.size >>> image1.paste(guido_head.resize((int(width/1.5), int(height/1.5))), (172, 40)) >>> image1.show()

Rotate and flip: >>> image = Image.open('./res/guido.png') >>> image.rotate(180).show() >>> image.transpose(Image.FLIP_LEFT_RIGHT).show()

Pixel‑level manipulation: >>> for x in range(80, 310): for y in range(20, 360): image.putpixel((x, y), (128, 128, 128)) >>> image.show()

Apply filters such as contour: >>> from PIL import Image, ImageFilter >>> image = Image.open('./res/guido.jpg') >>> image.filter(ImageFilter.CONTOUR).show()

Processing Excel Spreadsheets

The openpyxl module enables reading and writing of modern Excel files (xlsx). Example:

import datetime
from openpyxl import Workbook
wb = Workbook()
ws = wb.active
ws['A1'] = 42
ws.append([1, 2, 3])
ws['A2'] = datetime.datetime.now()
wb.save("sample.xlsx")

Processing Word Documents

The python-docx library allows creation and modification of .docx files. Example workflow:

from docx import Document
from docx.shared import Inches

document = Document()

document.add_heading('Document Title', 0)

p = document.add_paragraph('A plain paragraph having some ')
p.add_run('bold').bold = True
p.add_run(' and some ')
p.add_run('italic.').italic = True

document.add_heading('Heading, level 1', level=1)

document.add_paragraph('Intense quote', style='Intense Quote')

document.add_paragraph('first item in unordered list', style='List Bullet')

document.add_paragraph('first item in ordered list', style='List Number')

document.add_picture('monty-truth.png', width=Inches(1.25))

records = (
    (3, '101', 'Spam'),
    (7, '422', 'Eggs'),
    (4, '631', 'Spam, spam, eggs, and spam')
)

table = document.add_table(rows=1, cols=3)
hdr_cells = table.rows[0].cells
hdr_cells[0].text = 'Qty'
hdr_cells[1].text = 'Id'
hdr_cells[2].text = 'Desc'
for qty, id, desc in records:
    row_cells = table.add_row().cells
    row_cells[0].text = str(qty)
    row_cells[1].text = id
    row_cells[2].text = desc

document.add_page_break()

document.save('demo.docx')

The article concludes with a disclaimer that the content is collected from the internet and the original author holds the copyright.