Why is image not displayed in Experience Editor in SXA image or carousel component

The most-likely reason for selected image not displayed in XPE is:

1. No theme/device is selected in theme tile of Experience Accelerator ribbon in XPE

2. Theme is set as Wireframe in Experience Accelerator ribbon in XPE

Based on a support case I raised, this is the Sitecore way of selecting an image for the SXA image component:

- Create or select a valid theme

- In XPE, click theme tile, ensure that the theme is selected along with the device (theme shouldn't be wireframe though)

- Drop the image component to placeholder

- Choose the image

Details:

1. Create new tenant

2. Create a new site within the tenant

3. Now, if you don't assign a theme to the site, SXA does warn you

4. So, better create a new theme within  the site

Click Ok button.

5. Open XPE for the home page created for the new site. Then,

Experience Accelerator > View mode, Click selected theme

6. Click Experience Accelerator > Theme, Ensure to select the new theme: mytheme

There is a small glitch here, in case if you selected an inbuilt theme like basic2 during site creation, it will be automatically selected and displayed in the above drop down but not for a new theme, I had to manually select it.

7. Drag and drop image component, browse and upload an image

8. Image available for selection so select it

9. Now, if image doesn't display in the component, ensure to open the theme tile in the Experience Accelerator ribbon and ensure both the drop down options below are selected

9. If you leave even one of those blank, you won't get any alerts or messages, instead image won't be displayed in the component

10. Also, if theme is selected as wireframe, you will get the blank image behaviour

11. On the other hand, if you select a theme like basic2 during site creation,

12 The image will appear fine in XPE

10. At any point, you blanked the theme drop downs  and later select valid values, you have to comeback and hard-reload the page in XPE for the newly selected theme to take effect, the XPE might look like this then

11. Click on the little grey image and you should be able to choose image as ever

12. Now, if you choose the image and select the image, should work fine