read-text-in-image

🖼️ Image Text Reader using PyTesseract (OCR)

This project extracts text from images using Python and Tesseract OCR (Optical Character Recognition).
It works on printed and handwritten text images, returning the detected text as plain text or saving it to a file.

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🚀 Features

• Reads text from images (JPG, PNG, BMP, etc.)
• Supports printed and handwritten text
• Easy integration with Python scripts
• Option to save extracted text to .txt file
• Lightweight and open-source

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🧩 Tech Stack

• Python 3.8+
• PyTesseract (Python wrapper for Google Tesseract OCR)
• Pillow (PIL) for image processing

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⚙️ Setup Instructions

1️⃣ Install Tesseract OCR Engine

🔹 Windows

1. Download the installer from: 👉 https://github.com/UB-Mannheim/tesseract/wiki
2. Install it and note the installation path (e.g., C:\Program Files\Tesseract-OCR\tesseract.exe)

🔹 macOS

brew install tesseract

🔹 Ubuntu / Linux

sudo apt update
sudo apt install tesseract-ocr

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2️⃣ Install Python Dependencies

pip install pytesseract pillow

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3️⃣ Project Structure

📁 image-text-reader/
├── images/
│   ├── sample1.jpg
│   ├── sample2.png
├── read_text.py
└── README.md

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5️⃣ Run the Script

python read_text.py

🧠 Output will appear in the terminal and a .txt file will be created for each image:

sample1_output.txt
sample2_output.txt

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🧪 Example Output

Input:

Output (Console):

Hello World!
This text was extracted using PyTesseract OCR.

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📚 Tips

• For better accuracy:

  • Use clear, high-resolution images.
  • Preprocess images (grayscale, thresholding, noise removal).

• You can detect text in different languages:

  pytesseract.image_to_string(image, lang='eng+hin')

  (Make sure the language data is installed for Tesseract.)

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📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

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