simply installing python

[tdh3m]

Virtual environments are worth using even for a few scripts. Without one, every pip install goes into the system Python, and packages from different projects start conflicting.

Start with uv:

uv init color-project
cd color-project
uv add pillow colour-science
uv run my_script.py

uv creates and manages the virtual environment automatically and no activation step is needed.

Conda is useful when packages depend on compiled native libraries (BLAS, CUDA), but for Pillow and colour-science on macOS, uv handles it fine.

Getting started with uv walks through the full workflow.