tkinter 8.6 still doesn't support png files?

Question

I use python 3.7.9 on Windows. tkinter version is 8.6.

I am following Here, and trying to use .png image as a GUI background.
When I run #1, it throws an error. When I run #2, it works fine.

Official document says :

• PhotoImage for images in PGM, PPM, GIF and PNG formats. The latter is supported starting with Tk 8.6.

I found similar questions asked years ago, but that was when tkinter had not yet supported .png and they advised to use PIL.

I checked my tkinter version and it says 8.6, anyone could enlighten me what the problem is here? Is the use of PIL still officially required to handle png?

On a side note, exact same error raised for #1 when I replaced .png with .gif as well.

---

Error

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
TclError                                  Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-2-4a440c40f4bf> in <module>
      4 root = Tk()
      5 
----> 6 bg = PhotoImage(file='test.png')
      7 bg_label = Label(root, image=bg)
      8 bg_label.place(x=0, y=0, relwidth=1, relheight=1)

~\anaconda3\envs\my_env\lib\tkinter\__init__.py in __init__(self, name, cnf, master, **kw)
   3543         Valid resource names: data, format, file, gamma, height, palette,
   3544         width."""
-> 3545         Image.__init__(self, 'photo', name, cnf, master, **kw)
   3546     def blank(self):
   3547         """Display a transparent image."""

~\anaconda3\envs\my_env\lib\tkinter\__init__.py in __init__(self, imgtype, name, cnf, master, **kw)
   3499                 v = self._register(v)
   3500             options = options + ('-'+k, v)
-> 3501         self.tk.call(('image', 'create', imgtype, name,) + options)
   3502         self.name = name
   3503     def __str__(self): return self.name

TclError: couldn't recognize data in image file "test.png"

#1

from tkinter import *

root = Tk()

bg = PhotoImage(file='test.png')
bg_label = Label(root, image=bg)
bg_label.place(x=0, y=0, relwidth=1, relheight=1)

root.mainloop()

#2

from tkinter import *
from PIL import Image, ImageTk

root = Tk()

bg = ImageTk.PhotoImage(file='test.gif')
bg_label = Label(root, image=bg)
bg_label.place(x=0, y=0, relwidth=1, relheight=1)

root.mainloop()

Answer 1

tkinter version 8.6 does support .png iamges.

The reason it wasn't working was the image I thought was a .png file was actually not a .png file. I downloaded the image originally as a .jpg file and I simply changed the extension. Changing extensions does not change the file type itself.

I grabbed other .png image and it worked fine.