Installing PIL (Python Imaging Library) in Win7 64 bits, Python 2.6.4

Question

I'm trying to install said library for use with Python. I tried downloading the executable installer for Windows, which runs, but says it doesn't find a Python installation. Then tried registering (http://effbot.org/zone/python-register.htm) Python, but the script says it can't register (although the keys appear in my register).

Then I tried downloading the source package: I run the setup.py build and it works, but when I run setup.py install it says the following:

running install running build running build_py running build_ext building '_imaging' extension error: Unable to find vcvarsall.bat 

What can I do?

UPDATE (May 2014): Like said by some comments and answers, PIL is currently unmantained, and the way to go now is to use Pillow (https://pypi.python.org/pypi/Pillow/, pip install pillow).

Answer 1

I found a working win7 binary here: Unofficial Windows Binaries for Python Extension Packages It's from Christoph Gohlke at UC Irvine. There are binaries for python 2.5, 2.6, 2.7 , 3.1 and 3.2 for both 32bit and 64 bit windows.

There are a whole lot of other compiled packages here, too.

Be sure to uninstall your old PILfirst. If you used easy_install: easy_install -mnX pil
And then remove the egg in python/Lib/site-packages

Be sure to remove any other failed attempts. I had moved the _image dll into Python*.*/DLLs and I had to remove it.