How to open PIL Image in Tkinter on Canvas

Try creating a PIL Image first, then using that to create the PhotoImage.

from Tkinter import *import Image, ImageTkroot = Tk()root.geometry('1000x1000')canvas = Canvas(root,width=999,height=999)canvas.pack()pilImage = Image.open("ball.gif")image = ImageTk.PhotoImage(pilImage)imagesprite = canvas.create_image(400,400,image=image)root.mainloop()

(An old question, but the answers so far are only half-complete.)

Read the docs:

class PIL.ImageTk.PhotoImage(image=None, size=None, **kw)

• image – Either a PIL image, or a mode string. [...]
• file – A filename to load the image from (using Image.open(file)).

So in your example, use

image = ImageTk.PhotoImage(file="ball.gif")

or explicitly

image = ImageTk.PhotoImage(Image("ball.gif"))

(And remember – as you did correctly: Keep a reference to the image object in your Python program, otherwise it is garbage-collected before you seee it.)

You can import multiple image formats, and resize with this code. "basewidth" sets the width of your image.

from Tkinter import *import PILfrom PIL import ImageTk, Imageroot=Tk()image = Image.open("/path/to/your/image.jpg")canvas=Canvas(root, height=200, width=200)basewidth = 150wpercent = (basewidth / float(image.size[0]))hsize = int((float(image.size[1]) * float(wpercent)))image = image.resize((basewidth, hsize), PIL.Image.ANTIALIAS)photo = ImageTk.PhotoImage(image)item4 = canvas.create_image(100, 80, image=photo)canvas.pack(side = TOP, expand=True, fill=BOTH)root.mainloop()