Image is not displaying in Google Colab while using imshow()

Question

I am working on a project which requires functions from OpenCV to plot images. I am trying to display image using the below code in Google Colab. But nothing shows up in the

Answer 1

The cv2.imshow() and cv.imshow() functions from the opencv-python package are incompatible with Jupyter notebook; see https://github.com/jupyter/notebook/issues/3935.

As a replacement, you can use the following function:

from google.colab.patches import cv2_imshow

For example, here we download and display a PNG image of the Colab logo:

!curl -o logo.png https://colab.research.google.com/img/colab_favicon_256px.png
import cv2
img = cv2.imread('logo.png', cv2.IMREAD_UNCHANGED)
cv2_imshow(img)

Credits: Code Snippets in Google Colab

Answer 2

imshow requires an X server, which isn't available in a web browser.

Instead, use the IPython.display.Image library. Here's an example: https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1jWHKR6rhhyZtUulttBD6Pxd_AJhgtVaV

Answer 3

Found one workaround. We can use %matplotlib inline in the code to use imshow. Used as example here in In[28] - link

Answer 4

Google colab crashes if you try to display image using cv2.imshow() instead import from google.colab.patches import cv2_imshow and display using cv2_imshow(<image>)

Answer 5

Instead of using cv2.imshow() try this:

1. Change the import to from google.colab.patches import cv2_imshow
2. Replace cv2.imshow() to cv2_imshow()

I tried it and it worked for me.