Errno 13 while Transfer-learning Inception v3

Question

So I just learned python a couple of weeks ago, and I'm new to tensorflow. But I need to fine-tune the inception model. While trying to follow some tutorials, when I finally started to see some light, I got this horrible error that I can´t get rid of. Here is the part of the code that has the error:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

train_dir=r'C:\tf_files'

image_paths=train_dir

images = [plt.imread(train_dir) for path in image_paths]

def plot_images(images, cls_true, cls_pred=None, smooth=True):
    assert len(images) == len(cls_true)

    # Create figure with sub-plots.
    fig, axes = plt.subplots(3, 3)

    # Adjust vertical spacing.
    if cls_pred is None:
        hspace = 0.3
    else:
        hspace = 0.6
    fig.subplots_adjust(hspace=hspace, wspace=0.3)

    # Interpolation type.
    if smooth:
        interpolation = 'spline16'
    else:
        interpolation = 'nearest'

    for i, ax in enumerate(axes.flat):
        # There may be less than 9 images, ensure it doesn't crash.
        if i < len(images):
            # Plot image.
            ax.imshow(images[i],
                      interpolation=interpolation)

            # Name of the true class.
            cls_true_name = class_names[cls_true[i]]

            # Show true and predicted classes.
            if cls_pred is None:
                xlabel = "True: {0}".format(cls_true_name)
            else:
                # Name of the predicted class.
                cls_pred_name = class_names[cls_pred[i]]

                xlabel = "True: {0}\nPred: {1}".format(cls_true_name, cls_pred_name)

            # Show the classes as the label on the x-axis.
            ax.set_xlabel(xlabel)

        # Remove ticks from the plot.
        ax.set_xticks([])
        ax.set_yticks([])

    # Ensure the plot is shown correctly with multiple plots
    # in a single Notebook cell.
    plt.show()

and this is what the terminal spits:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:/Users/Shangai/PycharmProjects/PSai/Testing.py", line 14, in <module>
    images = [plt.imread(train_dir) for path in image_paths]
  File "C:/Users/Shangai/PycharmProjects/PSai/Testing.py", line 14, in <listcomp>
    images = [plt.imread(train_dir) for path in image_paths]
  File "C:\Users\Shangai\AppData\Local\conda\conda\envs\PSAI\lib\site-packages\matplotlib\pyplot.py", line 2152, in imread
    return matplotlib.image.imread(fname, format)
  File "C:\Users\Shangai\AppData\Local\conda\conda\envs\PSAI\lib\site-packages\matplotlib\image.py", line 1359, in imread
    with Image.open(fname) as image:
  File "C:\Users\Shangai\AppData\Local\conda\conda\envs\PSAI\lib\site-packages\PIL\Image.py", line 2609, in open
    fp = builtins.open(filename, "rb")
PermissionError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: 'C:\\tf_files'

I basically need a way to make an image an array, but I can´t figure it out. Any help would be appreciated, thank you so much. Peace!

-I'm using pycharm with an anaconda environment-

Answer 1

EDIT: You called imread for a directory, which is actually not an image. Are your images in C:\\tf_files ? If so, use os.listdir() to get ALL (including non-image) files within a directory. So your code (should be) like this:

train_dir=r'C:\tf_files' # The directory contains images    
image_paths=os.listdir(train_dir)  # Get the image file only, you can check by checking its extension   
images = [plt.imread(train_dir) for path in image_paths]  

There is one more thing: The Permission denied error is raised, which is confused to me. If my answer help you solve the problem, which mean the error is not due to ownership, so I have no idea why this Permission denied happen.

---

This is the problem PermissionError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: 'C:\\\\tf_files'
Do you have access to C:\\\\tf_files directory? Try to gain ownership, or just edit the path to somewhere you have access