[FIXED] How to read .tif image in OpenCV

Issue

I want to load and display a .tif image in OpenCV Python. I load the image using cv2.imread('1_00001.tif') and then I display it using plt.imshow(img), but the image displayed is all black instead of what it was originally.

I can load and display the image correctly using PIL's Image.open() and matplotlib's mpimg.imread() so I think it is a cv2 specific problem. However, I have also successfully displayed .jpg and .tiff images using the same cv2.imread() function so it may also be a problem with specifically that .tif image.

import cv2
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

img = cv2.imread('1_00001.tif')
plt.imshow(img)

I expect an image of a circle with a few blurry lines inside, but the actual output is just a black image.

Solution

Check your image pixel values. plt.imshow clips pixel values from 0-255, so I would guess that you're feeding in a PNG image with values greater than 255, and they're all getting clipped to 255 (black). Usually you'll want to normalize a TIFF or PNG image before feeding them to plt.imshow, so it's interesting that you're not seeing this problem on some tiff images.

Answered By - skeller88