in order to manipulate an imageyou need to understand the basics of how computers deal with colors and coordinates in images and how you can work with colors and coordinates in pillow but before you continueinstall the pillow module see appendix for help installing third-party modules colors and rgba values computer programs often represent color in an image as an rgba value an rgba value is group of numbers that specify the amount of redgreenblueand alpha (or transparencyin color each of these component values is an integer from (none at allto (the maximumthese rgba values are assigned to individual pixelsa pixel is the smallest dot of single color the computer screen can show (as you can imaginethere are millions of pixels on screena pixel' rgb setting tells it precisely what shade of color it should display images also have an alpha value to create rgba values if an image is displayed on the screen over background image or desktop wallpaperthe alpha value determines how much of the background you can "see throughthe image' pixel in pillowrgba values are represented by tuple of four integer values for examplethe color red is represented by ( this color has the maximum amount of redno green or blueand the maximum alpha valuemeaning it is fully opaque green is represented by ( )and blue is ( whitethe combination of all colorsis ( )while blackwhich has no color at allis ( if color has an alpha value of it is invisibleand it doesn' really matter what the rgb values are after allinvisible red looks the same as invisible black pillow uses the standard color names that html uses table - lists selection of standard color names and their values table - standard color names and their rgba values name rgba value name rgba value white ( red ( green ( blue ( gray ( yellow ( black ( purple ( pillow offers the imagecolor getcolor(function so you don' have to memorize rgba values for the colors you want to use this function takes color name string as its first argumentand the string 'rgbaas its second argumentand it returns an rgba tuple