Plotting images side by side using matplotlib

One thing that I found quite helpful to use to print all images :

_, axs = plt.subplots(n_row, n_col, figsize=(12, 12))
axs = axs.flatten()
for img, ax in zip(imgs, axs):
    ax.imshow(img)
plt.show()

If the images are in an array and you want to iterate through each element and print it, you can write the code as follows:

plt.figure(figsize=(10,10)) # specifying the overall grid size

for i in range(25):
    plt.subplot(5,5,i+1)    # the number of images in the grid is 5*5 (25)
    plt.imshow(the_array[i])

plt.show()

Also note that I used subplot and not subplots. They're both different

You are plotting all your images on one axis. What you want ist to get a handle for each axis individually and plot your images there. Like so:

fig = plt.figure()
ax1 = fig.add_subplot(2,2,1)
ax1.imshow(...)
ax2 = fig.add_subplot(2,2,2)
ax2.imshow(...)
ax3 = fig.add_subplot(2,2,3)
ax3.imshow(...)
ax4 = fig.add_subplot(2,2,4)
ax4.imshow(...)

For more info have a look here: http://matplotlib.org/examples/pylab_examples/subplots_demo.html

For complex layouts, you should consider using gridspec: http://matplotlib.org/users/gridspec.html

Below is a complete function show_image_list() that displays images side-by-side in a grid. You can invoke the function with different arguments.

1. Pass in a list of images, where each image is a Numpy array. It will create a grid with 2 columns by default. It will also infer if each image is color or grayscale.

list_images = [img, gradx, grady, mag_binary, dir_binary]

show_image_list(list_images, figsize=(10, 10))

2. Pass in a list of images, a list of titles for each image, and other arguments.

show_image_list(list_images=[img, gradx, grady, mag_binary, dir_binary], 
                list_titles=['original', 'gradx', 'grady', 'mag_binary', 'dir_binary'],
                num_cols=3,
                figsize=(20, 10),
                grid=False,
                title_fontsize=20)

Here's the code:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

def img_is_color(img):

    if len(img.shape) == 3:
        # Check the color channels to see if they're all the same.
        c1, c2, c3 = img[:, : , 0], img[:, :, 1], img[:, :, 2]
        if (c1 == c2).all() and (c2 == c3).all():
            return True

    return False

def show_image_list(list_images, list_titles=None, list_cmaps=None, grid=True, num_cols=2, figsize=(20, 10), title_fontsize=30):
    '''
    Shows a grid of images, where each image is a Numpy array. The images can be either
    RGB or grayscale.

    Parameters:
    ----------
    images: list
        List of the images to be displayed.
    list_titles: list or None
        Optional list of titles to be shown for each image.
    list_cmaps: list or None
        Optional list of cmap values for each image. If None, then cmap will be
        automatically inferred.
    grid: boolean
        If True, show a grid over each image
    num_cols: int
        Number of columns to show.
    figsize: tuple of width, height
        Value to be passed to pyplot.figure()
    title_fontsize: int
        Value to be passed to set_title().
    '''

    assert isinstance(list_images, list)
    assert len(list_images) > 0
    assert isinstance(list_images[0], np.ndarray)

    if list_titles is not None:
        assert isinstance(list_titles, list)
        assert len(list_images) == len(list_titles), '%d imgs != %d titles' % (len(list_images), len(list_titles))

    if list_cmaps is not None:
        assert isinstance(list_cmaps, list)
        assert len(list_images) == len(list_cmaps), '%d imgs != %d cmaps' % (len(list_images), len(list_cmaps))

    num_images  = len(list_images)
    num_cols    = min(num_images, num_cols)
    num_rows    = int(num_images / num_cols) + (1 if num_images % num_cols != 0 else 0)

    # Create a grid of subplots.
    fig, axes = plt.subplots(num_rows, num_cols, figsize=figsize)
    
    # Create list of axes for easy iteration.
    if isinstance(axes, np.ndarray):
        list_axes = list(axes.flat)
    else:
        list_axes = [axes]

    for i in range(num_images):

        img    = list_images[i]
        title  = list_titles[i] if list_titles is not None else 'Image %d' % (i)
        cmap   = list_cmaps[i] if list_cmaps is not None else (None if img_is_color(img) else 'gray')
        
        list_axes[i].imshow(img, cmap=cmap)
        list_axes[i].set_title(title, fontsize=title_fontsize) 
        list_axes[i].grid(grid)

    for i in range(num_images, len(list_axes)):
        list_axes[i].set_visible(False)

    fig.tight_layout()
    _ = plt.show()

As per matplotlib's suggestion for image grids:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from mpl_toolkits.axes_grid1 import ImageGrid

fig = plt.figure(figsize=(4., 4.))
grid = ImageGrid(fig, 111,  # similar to subplot(111)
                 nrows_ncols=(2, 2),  # creates 2x2 grid of axes
                 axes_pad=0.1,  # pad between axes in inch.
                 )

for ax, im in zip(grid, image_data):
    # Iterating over the grid returns the Axes.
    ax.imshow(im)

plt.show()

I end up at this url about once a week. For those who want a little function that just plots a grid of images without hassle, here we go:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

def plot_image_grid(images, ncols=None, cmap='gray'):
    '''Plot a grid of images'''
    if not ncols:
        factors = [i for i in range(1, len(images)+1) if len(images) % i == 0]
        ncols = factors[len(factors) // 2] if len(factors) else len(images) // 4 + 1
    nrows = int(len(images) / ncols) + int(len(images) % ncols)
    imgs = [images[i] if len(images) > i else None for i in range(nrows * ncols)]
    f, axes = plt.subplots(nrows, ncols, figsize=(3*ncols, 2*nrows))
    axes = axes.flatten()[:len(imgs)]
    for img, ax in zip(imgs, axes.flatten()): 
        if np.any(img):
            if len(img.shape) > 2 and img.shape[2] == 1:
                img = img.squeeze()
            ax.imshow(img, cmap=cmap)

# make 16 images with 60 height, 80 width, 3 color channels
images = np.random.rand(16, 60, 80, 3)

# plot them
plot_image_grid(images)

Sample code to visualize one random image from the dataset

def get_random_image(num):
    path=os.path.join("/content/gdrive/MyDrive/dataset/",images[num])
    image=cv2.imread(path)
    return image

Call the function

images=os.listdir("/content/gdrive/MyDrive/dataset")
random_num=random.randint(0, len(images))
img=get_random_image(random_num)
plt.figure(figsize=(8,8))
plt.imshow(cv2.cvtColor(img,cv2.COLOR_BGR2RGB))

Display cluster of random images from the given dataset

#Making a figure containing 16 images 
lst=random.sample(range(0,len(images)), 16)
plt.figure(figsize=(12,12))
for index,value in  enumerate(lst):
    img=get_random_image(value)
    img_resized=cv2.resize(img,(400,400))
    #print(path)
    plt.subplot(4,4,index+1)
    plt.imshow(img_resized)
    plt.axis('off')

plt.tight_layout()
plt.subplots_adjust(wspace=0, hspace=0)
#plt.savefig(f"Images/{lst[0]}.png")
plt.show() 

Plotting images present in a dataset Here rand gives a random index value which is used to select a random image present in the dataset and labels has the integer representation for every image type and labels_dict is a dictionary holding key val information

fig,ax = plt.subplots(5,5,figsize = (15,15))
ax = ax.ravel()
for i in range(25):
  rand = np.random.randint(0,len(image_dataset))
  image = image_dataset[rand]
  ax[i].imshow(image,cmap = 'gray')
  ax[i].set_title(labels_dict[labels[rand]])
  
plt.show()