Unable to locate freeimage after install of mahotas in Python
Question: Hi I am new to Python and am following the [Python Image
Tutorial](http://pythonvision.org/basic-tutorial).

The following executes with no errors after installing the packages described
in the tutorial

    
    
    import numpy
    import scipy
    import pylab
    import pymorph
    import mahotas
    from scipy import ndimage
    

However when I try reading an image

    
    
    image = mahotas.imread('picture_file.jpg')
    

I get

> > > image = mahotas.imread('image_file.jpg') Traceback (most recent call
> last): File "", line 1, in File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-
> packages/mahotas-0.6.4-py2.6-linux-i686.egg/mahotas/**init**.py", line 68,
> in imread raise ImportError('mahotas.imread dependends on freeimage. Could
> not find it. Error was: %s' % e) ImportError: mahotas.imread dependends on
> freeimage. Could not find it. Error was: mahotas.freeimage: could not find
> libFreeImage in any of the following directories:
> '/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-
> packages/mahotas-0.6.4-py2.6-linux-i686.egg/mahotas', '/lib', '/usr/lib',
> '/usr/local/lib', '/opt/local/lib'

I tried installing FreeImagePy and can import it with no problems but it does
not help. I have tried adding to the Python path using package sys but not
help either.

EDIT: I should have mentioned that all the packages except pymorph and mahotas
was installed on my linux box doing '*sudo apt-get install package_name*'
while pymorph and mahotas was installed by downloading and doing '_sudo python
setup.py install_ '.


Answer: **Answer for more recent versions of mahotas**

Mahotas itself does not have the functionality to read in images. imread is
just a wrapper around one of 3 backends:

  1. mahotas-imread (i.e., <https://pypi.python.org/pypi/imread>)
  2. FreeImage
  3. matplotlib (which only supports PNG & JPEG)

Thus, you need to install one of the packages above. Freeimage can be
installed on Ubuntu as described below.

If you are running on Windows, you may wish to try [Christoph Gohlke’s
packages](http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/#mahotas).

**Original answer (for older versions of mahotas)**

You need to install freeimage to be able to use `mahotas.imread` (everything
else will actually work without it, it's an optional dependency). This is not
a Python package per se, just a regular library.

I don't know what distribution you are in, but try looking for a freeimage
package. On debian/ubuntu, you can just do:

    
    
    sudo apt-get install libfreeimage3
    

You will have a file `libfreeimage.so` in `/usr/lib` or in a similar place and
everything will work.

