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Python-tesseract is an optical character recognition (OCR) tool for python.That is, it will recognize and "read" the text embedded in images.

Python-tesseract is a wrapper forGoogle's Tesseract-OCR Engine.It is also useful as a stand-alone invocation script to tesseract, as it can read all image typessupported by the Pillow and Leptonica imaging libraries, including jpeg, png, gif, bmp, tiff,and others. Additionally, if used as a script, Python-tesseract will print the recognizedtext instead of writing it to a file.

Quickstart

Note: Test images are located in thetests/data folder of the Git repo.

Library usage:

fromPILimportImageimportpytesseract# If you don't have tesseract executable in your PATH, include the following:pytesseract.pytesseract.tesseract_cmd=r'<full_path_to_your_tesseract_executable>'# Example tesseract_cmd = r'C:\Program Files (x86)\Tesseract-OCR\tesseract'# Simple image to stringprint(pytesseract.image_to_string(Image.open('test.png')))# In order to bypass the image conversions of pytesseract, just use relative or absolute image path# NOTE: In this case you should provide tesseract supported images or tesseract will return errorprint(pytesseract.image_to_string('test.png'))# List of available languagesprint(pytesseract.get_languages(config=''))# French text image to stringprint(pytesseract.image_to_string(Image.open('test-european.jpg'),lang='fra'))# Batch processing with a single file containing the list of multiple image file pathsprint(pytesseract.image_to_string('images.txt'))# Timeout/terminate the tesseract job after a period of timetry:print(pytesseract.image_to_string('test.jpg',timeout=2))# Timeout after 2 secondsprint(pytesseract.image_to_string('test.jpg',timeout=0.5))# Timeout after half a secondexceptRuntimeErrorastimeout_error:# Tesseract processing is terminatedpass# Get bounding box estimatesprint(pytesseract.image_to_boxes(Image.open('test.png')))# Get verbose data including boxes, confidences, line and page numbersprint(pytesseract.image_to_data(Image.open('test.png')))# Get information about orientation and script detectionprint(pytesseract.image_to_osd(Image.open('test.png')))# Get a searchable PDFpdf=pytesseract.image_to_pdf_or_hocr('test.png',extension='pdf')withopen('test.pdf','w+b')asf:f.write(pdf)# pdf type is bytes by default# Get HOCR outputhocr=pytesseract.image_to_pdf_or_hocr('test.png',extension='hocr')# Get ALTO XML outputxml=pytesseract.image_to_alto_xml('test.png')# getting multiple types of output with one call to save compute time# currently supports mix and match of the following: txt, pdf, hocr, box, tsvtext,boxes=pytesseract.run_and_get_multiple_output('test.png',extensions=['txt','box'])

Support for OpenCV image/NumPy array objects

importcv2img_cv=cv2.imread(r'/<path_to_image>/digits.png')# By default OpenCV stores images in BGR format and since pytesseract assumes RGB format,# we need to convert from BGR to RGB format/mode:img_rgb=cv2.cvtColor(img_cv,cv2.COLOR_BGR2RGB)print(pytesseract.image_to_string(img_rgb))# ORimg_rgb=Image.frombytes('RGB',img_cv.shape[:2],img_cv,'raw','BGR',0,0)print(pytesseract.image_to_string(img_rgb))

If you need custom configuration like oem/psm, use theconfig keyword.

# Example of adding any additional optionscustom_oem_psm_config=r'--oem 3 --psm 6'pytesseract.image_to_string(image,config=custom_oem_psm_config)# Example of using pre-defined tesseract config file with optionscfg_filename='words'pytesseract.run_and_get_output(image,extension='txt',config=cfg_filename)

Add the following config, if you have tessdata error like: "Error opening data file..."

# Example config: r'--tessdata-dir "C:\Program Files (x86)\Tesseract-OCR\tessdata"'# It's important to add double quotes around the dir path.tessdata_dir_config=r'--tessdata-dir "<replace_with_your_tessdata_dir_path>"'pytesseract.image_to_string(image,lang='chi_sim',config=tessdata_dir_config)

Functions

• get_languages Returns all currently supported languages by Tesseract OCR.
• get_tesseract_version Returns the Tesseract version installed in the system.
• image_to_string Returns unmodified output as string from Tesseract OCR processing
• image_to_boxes Returns result containing recognized characters and their box boundaries
• image_to_data Returns result containing box boundaries, confidences, and other information. Requires Tesseract 3.05+. For more information, please check theTesseract TSV documentation
• image_to_osd Returns result containing information about orientation and script detection.
• image_to_alto_xml Returns result in the form of Tesseract's ALTO XML format.
• run_and_get_output Returns the raw output from Tesseract OCR. Gives a bit more control over the parameters that are sent to tesseract.
• run_and_get_multiple_output Returns like run_and_get_output but can handle multiple extensions. This function replaces the extension: str kwarg with extension: List[str] kwarg where a list of extensions can be specified and the corresponding data is returned after only one tesseract call. This function reduces the number of calls to tesseract when multiple output formats, like both text and bounding boxes, are needed.

Parameters

image_to_data(image, lang=None, config='', nice=0, output_type=Output.STRING, timeout=0, pandas_config=None)

• image Object or String - either PIL Image, NumPy array or file path of the image to be processed by Tesseract. If you pass object instead of file path, pytesseract will implicitly convert the image toRGB mode.
• lang String - Tesseract language code string. Defaults toeng if not specified! Example for multiple languages:lang='eng+fra'
• config String - Anyadditional custom configuration flags that are not available via the pytesseract function. For example:config='--psm 6'
• nice Integer - modifies the processor priority for the Tesseract run. Not supported on Windows. Nice adjusts the niceness of unix-like processes.
• output_type Class attribute - specifies the type of the output, defaults tostring. For the full list of all supported types, please check the definition ofpytesseract.Output class.
• timeout Integer or Float - duration in seconds for the OCR processing, after which, pytesseract will terminate and raise RuntimeError.
• pandas_config Dict - only for theOutput.DATAFRAME type. Dictionary with custom arguments forpandas.read_csv. Allows you to customize the output ofimage_to_data.

CLI usage:

pytesseract [-l lang] image_file

Prerequisites:

• Python-tesseract requires Python 3.6+

• You will need the Python Imaging Library (PIL) (or thePillow fork).Please check thePillow documentation to know the basic Pillow installation.

• InstallGoogle Tesseract OCR(additional info how to install the engine on Linux, Mac OSX and Windows).You must be able to invoke the tesseract command astesseract. If thisisn't the case, for example because tesseract isn't in your PATH, you willhave to change the "tesseract_cmd" variablepytesseract.pytesseract.tesseract_cmd.Under Debian/Ubuntu you can use the packagetesseract-ocr.For Mac OS users. please install homebrew packagetesseract.

  Note: In some rare cases, you might need to additionally installtessconfigs andconfigs fromtesseract-ocr/tessconfigs if the OS specific package doesn't include them.

Check thepytesseract package page for more information.

pip install pytesseract

pip install -U git+https://github.com/madmaze/pytesseract.git

git clone https://github.com/madmaze/pytesseract.gitcd pytesseract&& pip install -U.

conda install -c conda-forge pytesseract

To run this project's test suite, install and runtox. Ensure that you havetesseractinstalled and in your PATH.

pip install toxtox

Check the LICENSE file included in the Python-tesseract repository/distribution.As of Python-tesseract 0.3.1 the license is Apache License Version 2.0

• Originally written bySamuel Hoffstaetter
• Full list of contributors