Use pytesseract OCR to recognize text from an image

Question

I need to use Pytesseract to extract text from this picture:

and the code:

from PIL import Image, ImageEnhance, ImageFilter
import pytesseract
path = 'pic.gif'
img = Image.open(path)
img = img.convert('RGBA')
pix = img.load()
for y in range(img.size[1]):
    for x in range(img.size[0]):
        if pix[x, y][0] < 102 or pix[x, y][1] < 102 or pix[x, y][2] < 102:
            pix[x, y] = (0, 0, 0, 255)
        else:
            pix[x, y] = (255, 255, 255, 255)
img.save('temp.jpg')
text = pytesseract.image_to_string(Image.open('temp.jpg'))
# os.remove('temp.jpg')
print(text)

and the "temp.jpg" is

Not bad, but the result of print is ,2 WW Not the right text2HHH, so how can I remove those black dots?

Solution 1

Here is my solution:

import pytesseract
from PIL import Image, ImageEnhance, ImageFilter

im = Image.open("temp.jpg") # the second one 
im = im.filter(ImageFilter.MedianFilter())
enhancer = ImageEnhance.Contrast(im)
im = enhancer.enhance(2)
im = im.convert('1')
im.save('temp2.jpg')
text = pytesseract.image_to_string(Image.open('temp2.jpg'))
print(text)

Solution 2

Here's a simple approach using OpenCV and Pytesseract OCR. To perform OCR on an image, its important to preprocess the image. The idea is to obtain a processed image where the text to extract is in black with the background in white. To do this, we can convert to grayscale, apply a slight Gaussian blur, then Otsu's threshold to obtain a binary image. From here, we can apply morphological operations to remove noise. Finally we invert the image. We perform text extraction using the --psm 6 configuration option to assume a single uniform block of text. Take a look here for more options.

---

Here's a visualization of the image processing pipeline:

Input image

Convert to grayscale -> Gaussian blur -> Otsu's threshold

Notice how there are tiny specs of noise, to remove them we can perform morphological operations

Finally we invert the image

Result from Pytesseract OCR

2HHH

Code

import cv2
import pytesseract

pytesseract.pytesseract.tesseract_cmd = r"C:\Program Files\Tesseract-OCR\tesseract.exe"

# Grayscale, Gaussian blur, Otsu's threshold
image = cv2.imread('1.png')
gray = cv2.cvtColor(image, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
blur = cv2.GaussianBlur(gray, (3,3), 0)
thresh = cv2.threshold(blur, 0, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY_INV + cv2.THRESH_OTSU)[1]

# Morph open to remove noise and invert image
kernel = cv2.getStructuringElement(cv2.MORPH_RECT, (3,3))
opening = cv2.morphologyEx(thresh, cv2.MORPH_OPEN, kernel, iterations=1)
invert = 255 - opening

# Perform text extraction
data = pytesseract.image_to_string(invert, lang='eng', config='--psm 6')
print(data)

cv2.imshow('thresh', thresh)
cv2.imshow('opening', opening)
cv2.imshow('invert', invert)
cv2.waitKey()

Solution 3

I have something different pytesseract approach for our community. Here is my approach

import pytesseract
from PIL import Image
text = pytesseract.image_to_string(Image.open("temp.jpg"), lang='eng',
                        config='--psm 10 --oem 3 -c tessedit_char_whitelist=0123456789')

print(text)

Solution 4

To extract the text directly from the web, you can try the following implementation (making use of the first image):

import io
import requests
import pytesseract
from PIL import Image, ImageFilter, ImageEnhance

response = requests.get('https://i.stack.imgur.com/HWLay.gif')
img = Image.open(io.BytesIO(response.content))
img = img.convert('L')
img = img.filter(ImageFilter.MedianFilter())
enhancer = ImageEnhance.Contrast(img)
img = enhancer.enhance(2)
img = img.convert('1')
img.save('image.jpg')
imagetext = pytesseract.image_to_string(img)
print(imagetext)

Solution 5

Here is my small advancement with removing noise and arbitrary line within certain colour frequency range.

import pytesseract
from PIL import Image, ImageEnhance, ImageFilter

im = Image.open(img)  # img is the path of the image 
im = im.convert("RGBA")
newimdata = []
datas = im.getdata()

for item in datas:
    if item[0] < 112 or item[1] < 112 or item[2] < 112:
        newimdata.append(item)
    else:
        newimdata.append((255, 255, 255))
im.putdata(newimdata)

im = im.filter(ImageFilter.MedianFilter())
enhancer = ImageEnhance.Contrast(im)
im = enhancer.enhance(2)
im = im.convert('1')
im.save('temp2.jpg')
text = pytesseract.image_to_string(Image.open('temp2.jpg'),config='-c tessedit_char_whitelist=0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz -psm 6', lang='eng')
print(text)

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Comments

[MAK]

Hi,when i use this code i am getting below error "UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode characters in position 11-12: c haracter maps to <undefined>". can you suggest a way to over come this

[Moon Cheesez]

@MAK You will need to install win-unicode-console on your windows

[David]

something never worked with the image, can you edit and try again?

[nishit chittora]

@David can you please elaborate. What's not working?

[David]

mhm, don't remeber in the moment, but I'm sure it was not related to the code but to an uploaded image here propably. Did you remove an upload? Don't see it anymore.

[RAno]

I have tried -psm and nothing worked, but after seeing your post I tried --psmand it solved everything. great

[Md. Rezaul Karim]

this is one of the most accurate and neatly explained answers I have seen in SO! thanks!

[Hariharan AR]

This will not work when The text in the image is not English. when i Tried this with Japanese and Arabic, The result is not good