Python's OpenCV cv2.imread always returns None and cvFeatDetector crashes python

I'm getting my feet wet with opencv in python, and I figure a good place to start is loading an image. I've built opencv on my system, and have the python bindings and opencv dlls in the directory tpl/opencv, which is relative to my project. Here is some code that demonstrates the problem: ``` from tpl.opencv import cv2 from tpl.opencv.cv2 import cv from PIL import Image pil_img = Image.open('C:/test_file.jpg') #Read a temp file, the input is actually a computed image chip tmpname = 'C:/tmp.png' pil_img.save(tmpname,'PNG') # Write the image chip to disk im = cv.LoadImage(tmpname) # This seems to work im2 = cv2.imread(tmpname) # This always returns None ``` There is no error message, im2 is just always None. Could I have messed something up with the way I'm importing opencv? Is there a simple workaround? When I create ``` cvFeatDetector = cv2.FeatureDetector_create("MSER") ``` I get , so that part of cv2 seems to work As a workaround I just loaded the image with numpy ``` im2 = numpy.imread(inname) im = cv2.cvtColor(im2, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY) # This works. I was able to imshow it too cvFeatDetector = cv2.FeatureDetector_create("MSER") # Seems to produce a valid object cvFeatExtractor = cv2.DescriptorExtractor_create("SIFT") # Seems to produce a valid object kpts = cvFeatDetector.detect(im) # Crashes python ``` I find this very odd, because cv2.cvtColor converts the image successfully to grayscale. So some cv2 functions do work, and others fail to varying degrees. Edit. I fixed this by installing the released 2.4 of opencv.