How to show PIL Image in ipython notebook

Question

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()

Use IPython display to render PIL images in a notebook.

from PIL import Image               # to load images
from IPython.display import display # to display images

pil_im = Image.open('path/to/image.jpg')
display(pil_im)

I found that this is working

# source: http://nbviewer.ipython.org/gist/deeplook/5162445
from io import BytesIO

from IPython import display
from PIL import Image


def display_pil_image(im):
   """Displayhook function for PIL Images, rendered as PNG."""

   b = BytesIO()
   im.save(b, format='png')
   data = b.getvalue()

   ip_img = display.Image(data=data, format='png', embed=True)
   return ip_img._repr_png_()


# register display func with PNG formatter:
png_formatter = get_ipython().display_formatter.formatters['image/png']
dpi = png_formatter.for_type(Image.Image, display_pil_image)

After this I can just do:

pil_im

But this must be last line in cell, with no print after it

case python3

from PIL import Image
from IPython.display import HTML
from io import BytesIO
from base64 import b64encode

pil_im = Image.open('data/empire.jpg')
b = BytesIO()  
pil_im.save(b, format='png')
HTML("<img src='data:image/png;base64,{0}'/>".format(b64encode(b.getvalue()).decode('utf-8')))

much simpler in jupyter using pillow.

from PIL import Image
image0=Image.open('image.png')
image0

In order to simply visualize the image in a notebook you can use display()

%matplotlib inline
from PIL import Image

im = Image.open(im_path)
display(im)

You can open an image using the Image class from the package PIL and display it with plt.imshow directly.

# First import libraries.
from PIL import Image
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

# The folliwing line is useful in Jupyter notebook
%matplotlib inline

# Open your file image using the path
img = Image.open(<path_to_image>)

# Since plt knows how to handle instance of the Image class, just input your loaded image to imshow method
plt.imshow(img)