OpenCV + Tesseract OCR setup for C++ in Visual Studio

In Visual Studio:

Configuration of the project

Release Mode

x64

Installation of OpenCV

1. Download the latest version of OpenCV from https://opencv.org/releases/ (Current: 4.5.2)
2. Downloaded File : opencv-4.5.2-vc14_vc15 (Windows 10)
3. Setup & Extract to C:\  (Depends on your location path)
4. Open your C++ project. Right click & select properties on your main project solution.

6. go to C/C++ > General > Additional Include Directories

Add:

C:\opencv\build\include C:\opencv\build\include\opencv2

7. Linker > General > Additional Library Dependencies

Add:

C:\opencv\build\x64\vc15\lib

8. Linker > Input> Additional Dependencies

Add:

opencv_world451.lib

9. Click Apply
10. Now try add #include “opencv.hpp” to your code to start coding

Installation of VCPKG

1. Go to https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg
2. For windows user, follow the Quick Start: Windows instruction.
3. Press Window+R, type “cmd“.
4. In command prompt, type “cd C:/“
5. Then, type “git clone https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg“
   (Note: If your GIT is not installed (GIT != Github), please download and install https://git-scm.com/downloads)
   or
   if your GIT is not install,
   you can download the zip file using this link
   https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg/archive/refs/heads/master.zip
   Save and Extract to C:/ directory
6. After git clone is successful or extraction file is done, got back to the command prompt. Type “.\vcpkg\bootstrap-vcpkg.bat“
7. Furthermore, type “.\vcpkg\vcpkg install tesseract:x64-windows“
8. Wait for around 15-30 minutes for it to install depends on your computer speed.
9. After all is install, type “.\vcpkg\vcpkg integrate install“
10. Open your C++ project. Right click & select properties on your main project solution.

11. go to C/C++ > General > Additional Include Directories

Add:

C:\vcpkg\installed\x64-windows\include C:\vcpkg\installed\x64-windows\include\leptonica C:\vcpkg\installed\x64-windows\include\tesseract

12. Linker > General > Additional Library Dependencies

Add:

C:\vcpkg\installed\x64-windows\lib

13. Linker > Input> Additional Dependencies

Add: opencv_world451.lib is already previously added. (can be excluded)

opencv_world451.lib tesseract41.lib leptonica-1.80.0.lib archive.lib bz2.lib charset.lib gif.lib iconv.lib jpeg.lib libcrypto.lib libpng16.lib libssl.lib libwebpmux.lib libxml2.lib lz4.lib lzma.lib openjp2.lib tiff.lib tiffxx.lib turbojpeg.lib webp.lib webpdecoder.lib webpdemux.lib xxhash.lib zlib.lib zstd.lib

14. In your code, add two header files
#include <baseapi.h>
#include <allheaders.h>

15. Add tesseract::TessBaseAPI* api = new tesseract::TessBaseAPI(); to your code main() to check whether the code is working properly.

Installation of Tesseract OCR

1. Download the file from https://github.com/UB-Mannheim/tesseract/wiki
2. Install tesseract-ocr-w64-setup-v5.0.0-alpha.20210506.exe
3. Now you can use the code like

if (api->Init(“C:\\Program Files\\Tesseract-OCR\\tessdata“, “eng”)) {                 fprintf(stderr, “Could not initialize tesseract.\n”);                 exit(1);             }