"OSError: cannot identify image file" opening image with PIL/Image

Question

I am trying to get some code working that has broken but was working before. I have a PNG file on my desktop and I simply want to open it using the Image module from PIL.

from PIL import Image
img_dir = r'C:\Users\DylanDB\Desktop\square.png'
img = Image.open(img_dir)

This is a remake of my more advanced code that it happens in as well. The error is:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:/Users/DylanDB/Desktop/img_test.py", line 5, in <module>
    img = Image.open(img_dir)
  File "C:\Python34\lib\site-packages\PIL\Image.py", line 2317, in open
    % (filename if filename else fp))
OSError: cannot identify image file 'C:\\Users\\DylanDB\\Desktop\\square.png'

Answer 1

I had the same error and it was due to the file was recently created and not closed properly before opening with the Image.open(). After closing the file f.close() it werked as expect

Answer 2

I found that the file was a corrupted image.