Tkinter not displaying images - no error given

Question

I'm writing a program in Python using the tkinter library so that I can display 4 images from a specified path, however the images do not properly load. There is a large space where the images should've loaded, however there isn't actually an image there (see attached screenshots). I'm using ImageTk and Image from the PIL import since I read that's how to do it on another post, however it didn't work for me.

Here is some related code: (background info: program for Arabic letters lol)

# imports
from tkinter import *
from PIL import ImageTk,Image
import random

# variables
letters = ["yaa", "ghayn", "waaw", "ayn", "haa", "khaa", "miim", "7aa", "kaaf",
            "jiim", "qaaf", "baa", "faa", "alif", "nuun", "siin", "lam", "zay",
            "thaa-1", "raa", "taa-1", "thaal", "daad", "daal", "saad", "thaa-2",
             "shiin", "taa-2"] # a list of letters to be used later in the program

# GUI class
class Gui:
    def __init__(self):
        self.root = Tk(); self.root.title("Letter Learning")
        self.setup() # calls the setup function to load all the labels etc

    def setup(self):
        # top
        Label(self.root, text="Generate a new letter:").grid(row=0,column=0)
        Button(self.root, text="click me", command=self.pickLetter).grid(row=0,column=1)

    def pickLetter(self):
        label = {}
        letter = random.choice(letters)
        path = [f"letters\\{letter}-{x}.jpg" for x in range(4)]
        print(path)
        for x in range(4):
            label[f"image{x}"] = ImageTk.PhotoImage(Image.open(path[x])) # reference to the image
            Label(self.root, image=label[f"image{x}"]).grid(row=2, column=x) # putting the image in

As you can see, I used a for loop to iterate over my files (they're saved as <letter-0>, <letter>-1 etc) and put a label in the window. I saved a reference of the image in a dictionary, as another post said to keep a reference of images that you use, however nothing shows up.

Here is before/after of me loading the images:

The dictionary `label` is local variable which will be destroyed after function returns. — acw1668, Jan 18 '20 at 16:21
Is this why the images don't stay? Should I make it `self.label` to fix the issue, or do I need to return the `label` dictionary? — xupaii, Jan 18 '20 at 17:03
Read [Why does Tkinter image not show up if created in a function?](https://stackoverflow.com/a/16424553/7414759) — stovfl, Jan 18 '20 at 17:43

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 18 '20 at 18:05

def pickLetter(self):
        self.label = {}
        letter = random.choice(letters)
        path = [f"letters\\{letter}-{x}.jpg" for x in range(4)]
        print(path)
        for x in range(4):
            self.label[f"image{x}"] = ImageTk.PhotoImage(Image.open(path[x]))
            Label(self.root, image=self.label[f"image{x}"]).grid(row=2, column=x)

Making the label dictionary usable throughout the whole class through self.label (for lack of better terms) makes it so that the images will show up.

Tkinter not displaying images - no error given

1 Answers1