best python module to extract text from images

• OpenCV (v3.4.2 to 4+) DNN Python
  • Use a pre-trained DL model in OpenCV DNN to detect text
  • Use EAST text detector in OpenCV DNN for text detection
• Shape detector in OpenCV
  • Find all the contours in the image (including the picture)
  • Extract RoI, convert to grayscale
• Binary threshold the image
  • Dilate the text segments
  • Find the contours of the resulting blob
  • Use the bounding rectangle to bound the full sentence
  • Filter out smaller ones with a specific aspect ratio or minimum area
• Tesseract (v4+)
  • Run the text through Tesseract for text recognition
  • Use the confidence statistic for each prediction made
  • Discard anything with a confidence statistic < 0.8

• PyPDF2
  • Not accurate enough for text extraction
• textract and pdftotext
  • Not successful
• imagemagick with tesseract
  • Tutorial found here: https://diging.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/DCH/pages/5275668/Tutorial+Text+Extraction+and+OCR+with+Tesseract+and+ImageMagick
  • Can use pytesseract within python
• Check PDF contents to make sure it’s searchable
  • Conversion errors if tool didn’t have all fonts installed
  • PDF is optimized for printing not content storage
• OCR may be necessary
  • Adobe Acrobat and ABBY work well but cost money and installation hassles
  • Google Drive is free and cloud based
• Image processing techniques like dilation to improve quality for OCR
• pdfminer
  • Most robust PDF text extraction tool in Python
• Apache tikka
• xpdf
  • Command line tool, can be called from python script
  • Extracting text raw and letting xpdf to make its best guess at grouping the text

• Pytesseract
  • It is a Python Tesseract wrapper that helps extract text from images into HTML
  • It is well-written, easy to understand and cleanly formatted
  • It has a “no person left behind approach” by explaining as much as possible
  • It is easy to generate content with
• Other modules
  • It is beneficial to have a small navigation sidebar for longer articles
  • Writing tests can be left out of articles, especially with regards to ML powered solutions

• Tesserocr
  • Suggested by a Reddit user over pytesseract because it’s a true library binding which allows for processing OpenCV images in memory
• OCRmyPDF
  • Has a rotate-pages option for 90 degree rotations and a deskew option for doing alignment, which “will correct pages were scanned at a skewed angle by rotating them back into place”
• Pytesseract
  • Still does OCR, but not as efficient and doesn’t give as much control
• Proprietary software like Nuance
  • Necessary for OCR, but can be finicky and have massive data loss when using tesseract
• Preprocessing all data before moving forward
  • Look into the xml docs that come out of it for mapping
• A team of experts
  • Two months for a system that works, but this is just for being able to batch convert, preprocess, and minimal text processing
  • Solving a deep learning problem would take longer
  • Multiprocessing is not too easy to do with OCR because of the IO toll

• Kaggle notebook: https://www.kaggle.com/code/robikscube/extracting-text-from-images-youtube-tutorial
  • This is a Kaggle notebook linked to in the comments of the webpage, providing a solution to extract text from images using Python
  • The dataset used is also linked in the comments: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/robikscube/textocr-text-extraction-from-images-dataset
• Crossposting to /r/learnmachinelearning
  • This is a suggestion made in the comments of the webpage to crosspost to a different subreddit related to machine learning
  • It implies that the solution provided in the video might be related to machine learning

💭  Looking into

What other libraries are available for text extraction from images using Python?

💭  Looking into

What are the best practices for text extraction from images using Python?

💭  Looking into

What languages are supported by Python-tesseract for text extraction from images?

💭  Looking into

What are the use cases for Python OpenCV for text extraction from images?

💭  Looking into

What are the features of pytesseract as a Python module for text extraction from images?

• Python OpenCV
  • It is a free, open source library that is used for computer vision applications.
  • It is used in a wide range of applications like Object Identification, Machine Learning, Face Recognition, Deep Learning, Mobile Robotics, Gesture Recognition, and much more.
• Python-tesseract
  • It is an optical character recognition (OCR) tool for Python.
  • It is an open-source text recognition engine.
  • It is widely used to extract text from images or documents because it provides a more accurate result.
  • It supports an extensive variety of languages.
• Install tesseract OCR on windows
  • Download the exe file of tesseract either 32 bit or 64 bit as per your system from here.
  • Configure Tesseract path in the System Variables window under the Environment Variables window.
• Installing Modules
  • Install opencv-python, pytesseract and tesseract using the pip tool.
• Python Code to Extract Text From Image using Tesseract
  • Read the image and set the configurations.
  • Convert from image to string using the method image_to_string().
• Extract Image and Save to text file
  • Convert the image to grayscale and find the contours.
  • Loop over contours and crop and extract the text file.
  • Pass the rectangle area onto pytesseract for extracting text from it and then writing it into the text file.

• pytesseract
  • This library is used for text extraction from images
  • It requires the tesseract.exe binary to be present for proper installation
  • The path to the executable binary (tesseract.exe) needs to be remembered as it would be utilized later on in the code
  • To install the library, execute the following command in the command interpreter of the OS: pip install pytesseract
• Image module from PIL library
  • This library is used for opening an image

• pytesseract
  • Suggested by a reddit user: “It’s literally ~5 lines of code which you can find a working snippet and analyze it in a google search”
  • Requires pip installation: “pip install pytesseract”
  • Requires Pillow installation: “python3 -m pip install –upgrade Pillow”
• r/learnpython
  • Suggested by a reddit user: “On /r/LearnPython the community and the r/Python discord are actively expecting questions and are looking to help. You can expect far more understanding, encouraging and insightful responses over there.”
• r/lmgtfy
  • Suggested by a reddit user: “r/learnpython r/lmgtfy read the fkin’ docs!”
• Reading the docs
  • Suggested by a reddit user: “read the fkin’ docs!”
• Installing Python packages
  • Suggested by a reddit user: “Just Google how to install a python package”

• Python
  • Can use the power of Python to extract text from images
• Data mining for Machine Learning (ML) projects
  • Can use this technique for data mining for ML projects
• Taking pictures of…
  • Can use this technique to take pictures of different items and extract text from them

• “Text Extraction from Images with Python!”
  • There is a tutorial on Reddit about using Python to extract text from images.
  • The tutorial includes step-by-step instructions on how to use Python to extract text from images.
  • It is mentioned that the tutorial is helpful and that it offers a good starting point for a project.
  • The tutorial is 8 months old.

💭  Looking into

What is the best Python module for extracting text from images?