Unable to display image using tkinter

Question

I have the following code:

from tkinter import *
import os
from PIL import ImageTk, Image
#Python3 version of PIL is Pillow

class Scope:
    def __init__(self, master):
        self.master = master        

        f = Frame(root)

        self.greet_button = Button(f, text="Back", command=self.back)
        self.greet_button.pack(side= LEFT)

        self.greet_button = Button(f, text="Detect", command=self.detect)
        self.greet_button.pack(side= LEFT)

        self.close_button = Button(f, text="Continue", command=master.quit)
        self.close_button.pack(side=LEFT)

        photo = PhotoImage(file='demo.gif')
        cv = Label(master, image=photo)
        cv.pack(side= BOTTOM)
        f.pack()

    def greet(self):
        print("Previous image...")

root = Tk()
my_gui = Scope(root)
root.mainloop()

My first problem is that when I run this, all the buttons and the window show up, but there is no image. There is a square place holder indicating that the image should be in that box, but no image actually shows. I'm able to display the image if I just type the following:

root = Tk()

photo = PhotoImage(file='demo.gif')
label = Label(root, image=photo)
label.pack()

root.mainloop()

So, I know it's possible. But I don't know what I'm doing wrong with my GUI code. I've tried debugging this quite a bit and nothing seemed to work.

A second problem is, I am completely unable to display a jpg file in a GUI. I've tried using every tutorial and nothing quite does the trick. Ideally, I'd like to just be able to display a jpg image, if that's not possible, I'll settle for displaying a gif.

Oops, seems like I wasn't looking for the right thing @BryanOakley. What should I do in this situation? Just delete it? It does have a good answer. I also asked a second part to this question. Should I just reformat the question to just include that? — nini, Jul 19 '17 at 18:14
Sorry, I was not aware of the duplicate. However, there is also an answer to your second part on stackoverflow, see [here](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23901168/how-do-i-insert-a-jpeg-image-into-a-python-tkinter-window). Conclusion is: Always google first. Learn how to google efficiently. — nostradamus, Jul 20 '17 at 07:55

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 19 '17 at 11:33

Your reference to photo gets destroyed / carbage collected by Python after the class is called, so, there is nothing the label could show.

In order to avoid this, you have to maintain a steady reference to it, i.e. by naming it self.photo:

from tkinter import *
import os
from PIL import ImageTk, Image
#Python3 version of PIL is Pillow

class Scope:
    def __init__(self, master):
        self.master = master    
        f = Frame(root)

        self.greet_button = Button(f, text="Back")  #, command=self.back)
        self.greet_button.pack(side=LEFT)

        self.greet_button = Button(f, text="Detect")  #, command=self.detect)
        self.greet_button.pack(side=LEFT)

        self.close_button = Button(f, text="Continue", command=master.quit)
        self.close_button.pack(side=LEFT)

        self.photo = PhotoImage(file='demo.gif')
        cv = Label(master, image=self.photo)
        cv.pack(side=BOTTOM)
        f.pack()

    def greet(self):
        print("Previous image...")

root = Tk()
my_gui = Scope(root)
root.mainloop()

PS: Your code snippet was not running properly because two functions were missing.

Unable to display image using tkinter

1 Answers1