#9997·Pillow

ImageOps.contain and pad fail when a narrow image rounds to zero pixels

Author: ROTl24Created Sep 13, 2026Updated Sep 14, 2026

Resizing a narrow image with ImageOps.contain() can round the shorter dimension to zero, even when both requested dimensions are positive. ImageOps.pad() hits the same error because it calls contain().

python
from PIL import Image, ImageOps

image = Image.new("RGB", (100, 1), "red")
ImageOps.contain(image, (10, 10))
# ValueError: height and width must be > 0

ImageOps.pad(image, (10, 10))
# ValueError: height and width must be > 0

I would expect contain() to return a 10×1 image, and pad() to return that image within a 10×10 canvas. The transposed input, 1×100, fails too. A 20×1 input also fails at the half-pixel rounding boundary.

In contain(), the calculated dimension is passed directly from round() to resize(). Keeping that calculated dimension at least one pixel avoids the error.

Reproduced on Windows with Python 3.13.15 and Pillow 12.3.0, and with ImageOps.py from main at 0a61c530aed1a2792c6a47674ac2b70753bfccbb loaded against the same installed Pillow core. No external image or network access is needed for the reproduction.

Prepared with OpenAI Codex assistance.