Python has continued to evolve, and it’s time for the book to evolve with it. This Kickstarter will help fund the writing, editing, production, and publication of the fully updated third edition.

Why a Third Edition?

Python has changed significantly since the previous edition. New language features, updated best practices, and improvements throughout the ecosystem make this the right time for a comprehensive update.

The third edition will include:

• Updated examples compatible with modern versions of Python

• New coverage of current Python features and best practices

• Improved code samples and exercises (when applicable)

• Corrections and refinements based on reader feedback

The goal isn’t simply to revise the previous edition—it’s to create the best beginner-focused version of Python 101 yet.

Who Is This Book For?

This book is designed for:

• Complete beginners with no programming experience

• Students learning Python

• Self-taught developers

• Professionals transitioning into software development

• Anyone looking for a clear, practical introduction to Python

No prior programming knowledge is required.

Why Kickstarter?

Kickstarter allows readers to directly support the creation of the book while helping ensure it receives the time and attention needed for a high-quality release.

Funding will help cover:

• Writing

• Ebook production

• Print preparation

• Kickstarter fulfillment and shipping materials

• Any cover refinements

Most importantly, it allows me to focus on creating the strongest edition possible.

Rewards

Depending on your pledge level, rewards may include:

• DRM-free PDF edition

• EPUB and Kindle editions

• Printed paperback

• Signed copies

• Early access to chapters during development

• Exclusive Kickstarter updates

Project updates will be shared throughout the process so backers can follow the book’s progress.

Thank You

Whether you back this project or simply share it with others, your support means a great deal.

Writing technical books is a collaborative effort between authors and readers. Your encouragement has helped make previous editions successful, and I’m excited to bring an updated Python 101 to the next generation of Python learners.

Thank you for helping make the third edition possible.

Back the project

Image brightness is a way to measure the intensity or luminosity of an image after it has been captured. Pillow’s ImageEnhance module allows you to modify the brightness of an image using the Brightness() class. If you use an enhancement factor of 0.0, Pillow will return a solid black image. When you use an enhancement factor of 1.0, you will get a copy of the original image returned.

For this example, you will be using a photo of Silver Falls from the state of Oregon:

To see how you can adjust the brightness of a photo with Python, open up your code editor and create a new file named enhance_brightness.py. Now add this code to the file:

In this code, you create an enhancer object using the Brightness() class. You use a factor of 1.5 for this example. When you run this code, you will see that the image has been brightened up considerably:

If you had used an enhancement factor of 2.5 as you did in the previous article on image adjustment, the image would have been very blown out. This one is brightened up more than necessary, but is still mostly acceptable. You should try a few different values on this photo or on one of your own.

Wrapping Up

Most cameras that you use today won’t need a lot of brightness adjustment unless you are taking pictures in a low-light location without a flash. Sometimes those photos can be saved by playing about with different brightness levels.

Occasionally you will need to adjust a photo’s brightness if the photo was taken with a bright background, such as a sunrise.

In either case, Python can help you improve your photos. This is especially true if you happened to take a bunch of photos at that same event and they all need to be tweaked slightly. Python is great for batch jobs such as this.

Give the Pillow package a try and see what you can do!

Want to Learn More?

You can learn more about what you can do with Python and Pillow in Mike’s book, Pillow: Image Processing with Python

Purchase at Gumroad, Leanpub, or Amazon

Let’s spend a little time learning how this all works.

Installing Spiel

According to the Spiel GitHub page, you can try Spiel without even installing it if you have docker installed. Here’s how to try Spiel:

$ docker run -it --rm ghcr.io/joshkarpel/spiel

However, for the purposes of this tutorial, you really should install Spiel. To do that, you will be using pip. Open up your terminal and run the following:

pip install spiel

Feel free to create a Python virtual environment first if you don’t want to install Spiel into your global Python packages.

Once you have Spiel installed, you can check that it is working by running the Spiel demo, like this:

spiel demo present

If that works, you are good to go!

Creating Your Presentation

The documentation gives a good example of how to create a one-slide presentation. Here’s their example:

According to the documentation, there are two ways to add slides:

• Use the decorator like in the example above

• Use `deck.add_slides()` and pass in one or more Slide objects

Here is a more complete example that creates a couple of custom slides:

When you run this code in your terminal, you will see something like this:

You can move to the next or previous slide using the arrow keys on your keyboard. If you want to exit, press CTRL+C.

Wrapping Up

Spiel seems like a neat package. It’s a shame that it is currently archived. Hopefully, the author will reopen it at some point, or someone else will pick up the torch. In the meantime, you can easily use it in a Python virtual environment and give it a try.

Python has had type hinting support since Python 3.5, over TEN years ago! However, Python’s type annotations have changed repeatedly over the years. In Python Typing: Type Checking for Python Programmers, you…

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Contrast is defined as the difference between dark and light in an image. A high-contrast image will have bright highlights and nice, dark shadows. Colors are usually bold and display texture. A low-contrast image, on the …

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You can read more about these classes in the documentation.

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Python’s documentation gives the following example of how you might use a logging filter:

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Pillow provides a similar dictionary for TIFF images in its TiffTags module. If you need a TIFF image, you can use this one, which is a cover from one of the author's other books on ReportLab:

You can create y…

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You can learn more about this module by checking out its documentation.

In this article, you will focus on getting this image metadata using Pillow.

Getting Exif Tag Data

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In this tutorial you will be learning about the following topics:

• The DOMQuery object

• Getting the first or last widget

• Query filters

• Query exclusions

• Other query methods

Let’s get started!

The DOMQuery Object

The DOMQuery object gets returned whenever you …

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You will be learning the following topics related to the DOM:

• The query one method

• Textual queries

You will learn more in th…

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my_list = []
print(dir(my_list))

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