What is PyTesseract?

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

Functions of PyTesseract

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 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.
image_to_osd : Returns result containing information about orientation and script detection.
image_to_alto_xml : Returns result in the form of Tesseract 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.

image : input image.
lang : Tesseract language code string. Default = eng. If you want to use multiple languages : set it lang=’eng+kor’.
config : Any addition custom configuration flags that are not available via the pytesseract function.
nice : modifies the processor priority for the Tesseract run. Note that it doesn’t work on Windows.
output_type : specifies the type of the output. Default = string.
timeout : duration in seconds for OCR processing.
pandas_config : Used only for the pyTesseract.Output.DATAFRAME type in image_to_data function.

It is used as configu= ‘–oem 1 –psm 0’

oem : OCR Engine mode
- 0 : Legacy engine only.
- 1 : LSTM engine only.
- 2 : Legacy + LSTM engines.
- 3 : Default.
psm : page segmentation mode
- 0 : Orientation and script detection (OSD) only.
- 1 : Automatic page segmentation with OSD.
- 2 : Automatic page segmentation, but no OSD, or OCR.
- 3 : Default. Fully automatic page segmentation, but no OSD.
- 4 : Assume a single column of text of variable sizes.
- 5 : Assume a single uniform block of vertically aligned text.
- 6 : Assume a single uniform block of text.
- 7 : Treat the image as a single text line.
- 8 : Treat the image as a single word.
- 9 : Treat the image as a single word in a circle.
- 10 : Treat the image as a single character.
- 11 : Sparse text. Find as much text as possible in no particular order.
- 12 : Sparse text with OSD.
- 13 : Raw line. Treat the image as a single text line, bypassing hacks that are Tesseract-specific.