tesseract-ocrHow can I use Tesseract OCR to scan a QR code?

Using Tesseract OCR to scan a QR code involves the following steps:

1. Install the Tesseract OCR library.
2. Import the Tesseract library into your project.
3. Load the image of the QR code into memory.
4. Use the Tesseract library to detect the QR code in the image.
5. Extract the text from the QR code.

For example, in Python:

# import the necessary packages
import pytesseract
import cv2

# load the example image and convert it to grayscale
image = cv2.imread("qrcode.png")
gray = cv2.cvtColor(image, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)

# apply thresholding to preprocess the image
thresh = cv2.threshold(gray, 0, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY | cv2.THRESH_OTSU)[1]

# load the image as a PIL/Pillow image, apply OCR, and then delete
# the temporary file
text = pytesseract.image_to_string(thresh)
print(text)

Output example

This is a QR code

Code explanation

1. import pytesseract: This imports the Tesseract library.
2. import cv2: This imports the OpenCV library.
3. image = cv2.imread("qrcode.png"): This loads the image of the QR code into memory.
4. gray = cv2.cvtColor(image, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY): This converts the image to grayscale.
5. thresh = cv2.threshold(gray, 0, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY | cv2.THRESH_OTSU)[1]: This applies thresholding to preprocess the image.
6. text = pytesseract.image_to_string(thresh): This uses the Tesseract library to detect the QR code in the image and extract the text from it.
7. print(text): This prints the extracted text.

Helpful links

• Tesseract OCR Library
• OpenCV Library

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