Why does Tkinter image not show up if created in a function?

Question

This code works:

import tkinter  root = tkinter.Tk() canvas = tkinter.Canvas(root) canvas.grid(row = 0, column = 0) photo = tkinter.PhotoImage(file = './test.gif') canvas.create_image(0, 0, image=photo) root.mainloop() 

It shows me the image.

Now, this code compiles but it doesn't show me the image, and I don't know why, because it's the same code, in a class:

import tkinter  class Test:     def __init__(self, master):         canvas = tkinter.Canvas(master)         canvas.grid(row = 0, column = 0)         photo = tkinter.PhotoImage(file = './test.gif')         canvas.create_image(0, 0, image=photo)  root = tkinter.Tk() test = Test(root) root.mainloop() 

Answer 1

The variable photo is a local variable which gets garbage collected after the class is instantiated. Save a reference to the photo, for example:

self.photo = tkinter.PhotoImage(...) 

If you do a Google search on "tkinter image doesn't display", the first result is this:

Why do my Tkinter images not appear? (The FAQ answer is currently not outdated)

Answer 2

from tkinter import * from PIL import ImageTk, Image  root = Tk()  def open_img():     global img     path = r"C:\.....\\"     img = ImageTk.PhotoImage(Image.open(path))     panel = Label(root, image=img)     panel.pack(side="bottom", fill="both") but1 = Button(root, text="click to get the image", command=open_img) but1.pack() root.mainloop()  

Just add global to the img definition and it will work