This statement prints "255": print Image.new("1", (1,1), 255).getpixel((0,0)) In mode "1", the internal representation is bytes. Which byte values are interpreted as zero and which as one? I use PIL 1.1.3 Gentoo Linux 1.3 "gcc version 2.95.3 20010315 (release)" AMD Thunderbird 1.0G chip Ed Jones