Skip to content
Advertisement

How to show PIL Image in ipython notebook

This is my code

from PIL import Image
pil_im = Image.open('data/empire.jpg')

I would like to do some image manipulation on it, and then show it on screen.
I am having problem with showing PIL Image in python notebook.

I have tried:

print pil_im

And just

pil_im

But both just give me:

<PIL.JpegImagePlugin.JpegImageFile image mode=RGB size=569x800 at 0x10ECA0710>

Advertisement

Answer

Updated 2021/11/17

When using PIL/Pillow, Jupyter Notebooks now have a display built-in that will show the image directly, with no extra fuss.

display(pil_im)

Jupyter will also show the image if it is simply the last line in a cell (this has changed since the original post). Thanks to answers from @Dean and @Prabhat for pointing this out.

Other Methods

From File

You can also use IPython’s display module to load the image. You can read more from the doc.

from IPython.display import Image 
pil_img = Image(filename='data/empire.jpg')
display(pil_img)

From PIL.Image Object

As OP’s requirement is to use PIL, if you want to show inline image, you can use matplotlib.pyplot.imshow with numpy.asarray like this too:

from matplotlib.pyplot import imshow
import numpy as np
from PIL import Image

%matplotlib inline
pil_im = Image.open('data/empire.jpg', 'r')
imshow(np.asarray(pil_im))

If you only require a preview rather than an inline, you may just use show like this:

pil_im = Image.open('data/empire.jpg', 'r')
pil_im.show()
User contributions licensed under: CC BY-SA
3 People found this is helpful
Advertisement