Develop Reference

How do I get openCV to detect this chess board I made?

I've tried using the findChessboardCorners function in open CV python. But it's not working.
These are the images I'm trying to get it to detect these images.
board.jpg:
board2.jpg:
I want it to be able to detect where the squares are and if a piece is on it.
So far I've tried
import cv2 as cv
import numpy as np
def rescaleFrame(frame, scale=0.75):
#rescale image
width = int(frame.shape[1] * scale)
height = int(frame.shape[0] * scale)
dimensions = (width,height)
return cv.resize(frame, dimensions, interpolation=cv.INTER_AREA)
img = cv.imread("board2.jpg")
gray = cv.cvtColor(img, cv.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
ret, corners = cv.findChessboardCorners(gray, (8,8),None)
if ret == True:
# Draw and display the corners
img = cv.drawChessboardCorners(img, (8,8), corners,ret)
img=rescaleFrame(img)
cv.imshow("board",img)
v.waitKey(0)
I was expect it to work like how this tutorial shows

The function findChessboardCorners is used to calibrate cameras using a black-and-white chessboard pattern. As far as I know, is not designed to detect the corners of a chess board with chess pieces on it.
This site shows an example of calibration "chess boards." And this site shows how these calibration chess boards are used, this example uses the ROS Library.
You can still use OpenCV but will need to try other functions. Assuming you took the photos yourself, you've also made the problem harder on yourself by using a background that has a lot of lines and corners, meaning you'll have to differentiate between those corners and corners on the board. You can also see that the top corners of the board behind the rooks are occluded. If you can retake the photos, I would take a top-down photo and do it on a blank surface that contrasts with the chessboard.
One example of corner detection in OpenCV is Harris corner detection. I wrote up a short example for you. You'll need to play around with this and other corner detection methods to see what works best. I found that adding a sobel filter to strength the lines in your image gave much better results. But it's still going to detect corners in the background and the corners on the pieces. You'll need to figure out how to filter those out.
import cv2 as cv
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
def sobel(src_image, kernel_size):
grad_x = cv.Sobel(src_image, cv.CV_16S, 1, 0, ksize=kernel_size, scale=1,
delta=0, borderType=cv.BORDER_DEFAULT)
grad_y = cv.Sobel(src_image, cv.CV_16S, 0, 1, ksize=kernel_size, scale=1,
delta=0, borderType=cv.BORDER_DEFAULT)
abs_grad_x = cv.convertScaleAbs(grad_x)
abs_grad_y = cv.convertScaleAbs(grad_y)
grad = cv.addWeighted(abs_grad_x, 0.5, abs_grad_y, 0.5, 0)
return grad
def process_image(src_image_path):
# load the image
src_image = cv.imread(src_image_path)
# convert to RGB (otherwise when you display this image the colors will look incorrect)
src_image = cv.cvtColor(src_image, cv.COLOR_BGR2RGB)
# convert to grayscale before attempting corner detection
src_gray = cv.cvtColor(src_image, cv.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
# standard technique to eliminate noise
blur_image = cv.blur(src_gray,(3,3))
# strengthen the appearance of lines in the image
sobel_image = sobel(blur_image, 3)
# detect corners
corners = cv.cornerHarris(sobel_image, 2, 3, 0.04)
# for visualization to make corners easier to see
corners = cv.dilate(corners, None)
# overlay on a copy of the source image
dest_image = np.copy(src_image)
dest_image[corners>0.01*corners.max()]=[0,0,255]
return dest_image
src_image_path = "board1.jpg"
dest_image = process_image(src_image_path)
plt.imshow(dest_image)
plt.show()

opencv detecting hallway edges and straight lines in realtime/still images

I have a picture that looks like this.
I do know that in simplecv, you can use:
img = Image('hallway.jpg')
img.show()
img.edges.show()
lines = img.findLines()
lines = lines.filter(lines.length() > 50)
lines.show()
I am wondering if anyone knows any library/document or can point me in any direction, that is able to detect the edges of corners, doors etc in real time or in still images with OpenCV?

Opencv python has implementations of Hough lines which could help. While the algo is heavy, there's a probabilistic version of it that works in realtime. You can even adjust parameters to make it faster at the cost of accuracy.
import cv2
import numpy as np
img = cv2.imread('hallway.jpg')
gray = cv2.cvtColor(img,cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
edges = cv2.Canny(gray,50,150,apertureSize = 3)
minLineLength = 100
maxLineGap = 10
lines = cv2.HoughLinesP(edges,1,np.pi/180,100,minLineLength,maxLineGap)
for x1,y1,x2,y2 in lines[0]:
cv2.line(img,(x1,y1),(x2,y2),(0,255,0),2)
cv2.imshow("preview", img)
cv2.waitkey(0)
Note that you might have to adjust thresholds in canny and other parameters according to your requirements.
An alternative is to use contours. This might help https://opencv-python-tutroals.readthedocs.io/en/latest/py_tutorials/py_imgproc/py_contours/py_contour_features/py_contour_features.html

How to improve depth map and what are my stereo images lacking?

I've been trying to convert stereo images into a depth map with use of opencv, but not matter what I do it seems to come out unreadable.
I was able to get an accurate depth image of example images that were provided in the opencv tutorial but not on any other image. Even when I attempted to download other premade, calibrated stereo image from online I get terrible results that are neither accurate nor are even close to quality that I get with the example images.
here is my main python script that I use to make the depth map:
import numpy as np
import cv2
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
imgL = cv2.imread('calimg_L.png',0)
imgR = cv2.imread('calimg_R.png',0)
# imgL = cv2.imread('./images/example_L.png',0)
# imgR = cv2.imread('./images/example_R.png',0)
stereo = cv2.StereoSGBM_create(numDisparities=16, blockSize=15)
disparity = stereo.compute(imgR,imgL)
norm_image = cv2.normalize(disparity, None, alpha = 0, beta = 1, norm_type=cv2.NORM_MINMAX, dtype=cv2.CV_32F)
cv2.imwrite("disparityImage.jpg", norm_image)
plt.imshow(norm_image)
plt.show()
where calimg_L.png is a calibrated version of the original image.
Here is the code I use to calibrate my images:
import numpy as np
import cv2
import glob
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
def createCalibratedImage(inputImage, outputName):
# termination criteria
criteria = (cv2.TERM_CRITERIA_EPS + cv2.TERM_CRITERIA_MAX_ITER, 30, 0.001)
# prepare object points, like (0,0,0), (1,0,0), (2,0,0) ....,(6,5,0)
objp = np.zeros((3*3,3), np.float32)
objp[:,:2] = np.mgrid[0:3,0:3].T.reshape(-1,2)
# Arrays to store object points and image points from all the images.
objpoints = [] # 3d point in real world space
imgpoints = [] # 2d points in image plane.
# org = cv2.imread('./chess.jpg')
# orig_cal_img = cv2.resize(org, (384, 288))
# cv2.imwrite("cal_chess.jpg", orig_cal_img)
images = glob.glob('./chess_webcam/*.jpg')
for fname in images:
print('file in use: ' + fname)
img = cv2.imread(fname)
gray = cv2.cvtColor(img,cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
# Find the chess board corners
ret, corners = cv2.findChessboardCorners(gray, (3,3),None)
# print("doing the thing");
print('status: ' + str(ret));
# If found, add object points, image points (after refining them)
if ret == True:
# print("found something");
objpoints.append(objp)
cv2.cornerSubPix(gray,corners,(11,11),(-1,-1),criteria)
imgpoints.append(corners)
# Draw and display the corners
cv2.drawChessboardCorners(img, (3,3), corners,ret)
cv2.imshow('img',img)
cv2.waitKey(500)
ret, mtx, dist, rvecs, tvecs = cv2.calibrateCamera(objpoints, imgpoints, gray.shape[::-1],None,None)
img = inputImage
h, w = img.shape[:2]
newcameramtx, roi=cv2.getOptimalNewCameraMatrix(mtx,dist,(w,h),1,(w,h))
# undistort
print('undistorting...')
mapx,mapy = cv2.initUndistortRectifyMap(mtx,dist,None,newcameramtx,(w,h),5)
dst = cv2.remap(inputImage ,mapx,mapy,cv2.INTER_LINEAR)
# crop the image
x,y,w,h = roi
dst = dst[y:y+h, x:x+w]
# cv2.imwrite('calibresult.png',dst)
cv2.imwrite(outputName + '.png',dst)
cv2.destroyAllWindows()
original_L = cv2.imread('capture_L.jpg')
original_R = cv2.imread('capture_R.jpg')
createCalibratedImage(original_R, "calimg_R")
createCalibratedImage(original_L, "calimg_L")
print("images calibrated and outputed")
This code was taken from opencv tutorial on how to calibrate images and was provided at least 16 images of the chess board, but was only able to identify the chessboard in about 4 - 5 of them. The reason I used such a relatively small grid search of 3x3 is because anything higher left me without any images to use for calibration due to its inability to find the chessboard.
Here is what I get from an example image(sorry for weird link, couldn't find how to upload):
https://ibb.co/DYMcdZc
here is the original:
https://ibb.co/gMkqyXD
https://ibb.co/YQZY40C
This acts a it should, but when I use it with any other image it gives me a mess, for example:
output:
https://ibb.co/kXwgDVn
looks like just a mess of pixels, to be fair when you put it into 'gray' on imshow it looks more readable but it is not very representative of the image's depth, here are the originals:
https://ibb.co/vqDKGS0
https://ibb.co/f0X1gMB
Even worse so, when I take images myself and do calibrate them through the chessboard code, it comes out as just a random mess of white and black pixels, and values of some goes into negatives and some pixels are impossibly high value.
tl;dr I can't get any stereo images to be made into a depth map even though the example image works just fine, why is that?

First I want to say that obtaining a good depth map is not such a simple task, and using the basic StereoMatching won't always lead to good results. Nevertheless, something better can be achieved.
In order:
Calibration: you should be able to find the checkerboard in more images, 4/5 is a very low number for calibration, it is very hard to estimate correctly the camera parameters with such low number. How do the images look like? Did you read them as grayscale images? Usually also using a different number for row and column (not 3x3 grid, like 4x3) helps to understand the checkerboard position (otherwise it could be ambiguous which side is up or right, for example, a 90 rotation would result in 0 rotation).
Rectification: this can be easily checked by looking at the images. Open two images on two different layers (using GIMP or similar) and check for similar points. After you rectified the images, they should lie on the same line. Are they really on the same line? If yes, rectification work, otherwise, you need a better calibration. The stereo matching won't work without this step.
Stereo Matching: if all above steps are correct, then you may have a problem on the parameters of the stereo matching. First thing to check is disparity range (since it looks like you have different resolution between example images and your images, you should check and adapt that value). Min disparity can also help (if you reduce the disparity range, you reduce the error possibilities) and also block size (15 is quite big, smaller is also enough).
From what you say, my guess would be the problem is on the calibration. You should try to check the rectified images, and if the problem is there try to acquire a new dataset (or find online a better one) and calibrate your images there. Once you can calibrate and rectify your images correctly, you should get better results.
I see the code is similar to the tutorial here so I guess that's correct and the main problem are the images. Hope this can help,I can help you more if you test and see where the probelm is!

Python OpenCV: Hough Transform does not detect obvious lines

Problem:
I want to detect lines in a given image using OpenCV in Python. Although there are multiple obvious vertical lines, neither normal HoughLines nor probabilistic HoughLines does find them. As I spent plenty of time playing around with the Parameters, I guess I am doing something fundamental wrong here. I am Aware of the fact, that hough-lines is usually applied on edges, e.g. after using canny. Due to canny´s non-maximum supression, canny does not give good results here.
Image, where detecting the vertical lines Fails :
Why:
Given this (image of a water meter) :
I want to detect the rectangle around each digit. To detect the rectangles, I used sobel filters in x and y direction and calculated Magnitude and angle/Phase of the Gradient. As I assume the image to be rotated correctly in this step, I extract vertical and horizontal edges as shown in the image. My hope was to make use of houghLines to find the bounding boxes. Finding the horizontal lines works perfectly, as seen in the
Debug plot containing further insights on the Problem, where as I does not work on the vertical components (second row) :
Detecting the rectangles around each digit would help me to
locate the Region of Interest
cut out the region inside the rectangle, in other words the digit. Several other approches to detect the digits directly by using contours, all had the problem of the outer rectangles interfering with the digit.
Update: the Code for detecting the vertical lines:
#img is initialized with the binarized, vertical component image, as shown above
minLength = 30
maxGap = 7
angle_res = np.pi / 180
rad_res = 2
threshold_val = 100
linesP = cv2.HoughLinesP(img, rad_res, angle_res, threshold_val, minLineLength=minLength, maxLineGap=maxGap)
cdst = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_GRAY2BGR)
cdstP = np.copy(cdst)
if linesP is None:
print("Error when finding lines (probabilistic hough transformation). No lines detected")
else:
# Copy edges to the images that will display the results in BGR
for i in range(0, len(linesP)):
l = linesP[i][0]
cv2.line(cdstP, (l[0], l[1]), (l[2], l[3]), (255,0,0), 3, cv2.LINE_AA)
plt.imshow(cdstP); plt.show()

First apply canny edge with proper settings of threshold. Then apply probabilistic hough line transform. After applying hough transform filter the lines with slope. You want to filter the box so you need to filter horizontal and vertical lines. After filtering lines apply morphological dilation and erosion operation back to back to resultant image to get neat box around each digit. While applying hough transform select parameters minimum line length, maximum line length and maximum line gap appropriately.
You can use trackbar function while selecting appropriate parameters. The sample code is given below for selection of threshold for canny edge.
import cv2
import numpy as np
cv2.namedWindow('Result')
img = cv2.imread('qkEuE.png')
v1 = 0
v2 = 0
def doEdges():
edges = cv2.Canny(img,v1,v2)
edges = cv2.cvtColor(edges,cv2.COLOR_GRAY2BGR)
res = np.concatenate((img,edges),axis = 0)
cv2.imshow('Result',res)
def setVal1(val):
global v1
v1 = val
doEdges()
def setVal2(val):
global v2
v2 = val
doEdges()
cv2.createTrackbar('Val1','Result',0,500,setVal1)
cv2.createTrackbar('Val2','Result',0,500,setVal2)
cv2.imshow('Result',img)
cv2.waitKey(0)
cv2.destroyAllWindows
Hope it helps you.

Detect if an OCR text image is upside down

I have some hundreds of images (scanned documents), most of them are skewed. I wanted to de-skew them using Python.
Here is the code I used:
import numpy as np
import cv2
from skimage.transform import radon
filename = 'path_to_filename'
# Load file, converting to grayscale
img = cv2.imread(filename)
I = cv2.cvtColor(img, COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
h, w = I.shape
# If the resolution is high, resize the image to reduce processing time.
if (w > 640):
I = cv2.resize(I, (640, int((h / w) * 640)))
I = I - np.mean(I) # Demean; make the brightness extend above and below zero
# Do the radon transform
sinogram = radon(I)
# Find the RMS value of each row and find "busiest" rotation,
# where the transform is lined up perfectly with the alternating dark
# text and white lines
r = np.array([np.sqrt(np.mean(np.abs(line) ** 2)) for line in sinogram.transpose()])
rotation = np.argmax(r)
print('Rotation: {:.2f} degrees'.format(90 - rotation))
# Rotate and save with the original resolution
M = cv2.getRotationMatrix2D((w/2,h/2),90 - rotation,1)
dst = cv2.warpAffine(img,M,(w,h))
cv2.imwrite('rotated.jpg', dst)
This code works well with most of the documents, except with some angles: (180 and 0) and (90 and 270) are often detected as the same angle (i.e it does not make difference between (180 and 0) and (90 and 270)). So I get a lot of upside-down documents.
Here is an example:
The resulted image that I get is the same as the input image.
Is there any suggestion to detect if an image is upside down using Opencv and Python?
PS: I tried to check the orientation using EXIF data, but it didn't lead to any solution.
EDIT:
It is possible to detect the orientation using Tesseract (pytesseract for Python), but it is only possible when the image contains a lot of characters.
For anyone who may need this:
import cv2
import pytesseract
print(pytesseract.image_to_osd(cv2.imread(file_name)))
If the document contains enough characters, it is possible for Tesseract to detect the orientation. However, when the image has few lines, the orientation angle suggested by Tesseract is usually wrong. So this can not be a 100% solution.

Python3/OpenCV4 script to align scanned documents.
Rotate the document and sum the rows. When the document has 0 and 180 degrees of rotation, there will be a lot of black pixels in the image:
Use a score keeping method. Score each image for it's likeness to a zebra pattern. The image with the best score has the correct rotation. The image you linked to was off by 0.5 degrees. I omitted some functions for readability, the full code can be found here.
# Rotate the image around in a circle
angle = 0
while angle <= 360:
# Rotate the source image
img = rotate(src, angle)
# Crop the center 1/3rd of the image (roi is filled with text)
h,w = img.shape
buffer = min(h, w) - int(min(h,w)/1.15)
roi = img[int(h/2-buffer):int(h/2+buffer), int(w/2-buffer):int(w/2+buffer)]
# Create background to draw transform on
bg = np.zeros((buffer*2, buffer*2), np.uint8)
# Compute the sums of the rows
row_sums = sum_rows(roi)
# High score --> Zebra stripes
score = np.count_nonzero(row_sums)
scores.append(score)
# Image has best rotation
if score <= min(scores):
# Save the rotatied image
print('found optimal rotation')
best_rotation = img.copy()
k = display_data(roi, row_sums, buffer)
if k == 27: break
# Increment angle and try again
angle += .75
cv2.destroyAllWindows()
How to tell if the document is upside down? Fill in the area from the top of the document to the first non-black pixel in the image. Measure the area in yellow. The image that has the smallest area will be the one that is right-side-up:
# Find the area from the top of page to top of image
_, bg = area_to_top_of_text(best_rotation.copy())
right_side_up = sum(sum(bg))
# Flip image and try again
best_rotation_flipped = rotate(best_rotation, 180)
_, bg = area_to_top_of_text(best_rotation_flipped.copy())
upside_down = sum(sum(bg))
# Check which area is larger
if right_side_up < upside_down: aligned_image = best_rotation
else: aligned_image = best_rotation_flipped
# Save aligned image
cv2.imwrite('/home/stephen/Desktop/best_rotation.png', 255-aligned_image)
cv2.destroyAllWindows()

Assuming you did run the angle-correction already on the image, you can try the following to find out if it is flipped:
Project the corrected image to the y-axis, so that you get a 'peak' for each line. Important: There are actually almost always two sub-peaks!
Smooth this projection by convolving with a gaussian in order to get rid of fine structure, noise, etc.
For each peak, check if the stronger sub-peak is on top or at the bottom.
Calculate the fraction of peaks that have sub-peaks on the bottom side. This is your scalar value that gives you the confidence that the image is oriented correctly.
The peak finding in step 3 is done by finding sections with above average values. The sub-peaks are then found via argmax.
Here's a figure to illustrate the approach; A few lines of you example image
Blue: Original projection
Orange: smoothed projection
Horizontal line: average of the smoothed projection for the whole image.
here's some code that does this:
import cv2
import numpy as np
# load image, convert to grayscale, threshold it at 127 and invert.
page = cv2.imread('Page.jpg')
page = cv2.cvtColor(page, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
page = cv2.threshold(page, 127, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY_INV)[1]
# project the page to the side and smooth it with a gaussian
projection = np.sum(page, 1)
gaussian_filter = np.exp(-(np.arange(-3, 3, 0.1)**2))
gaussian_filter /= np.sum(gaussian_filter)
smooth = np.convolve(projection, gaussian_filter)
# find the pixel values where we expect lines to start and end
mask = smooth > np.average(smooth)
edges = np.convolve(mask, [1, -1])
line_starts = np.where(edges == 1)[0]
line_endings = np.where(edges == -1)[0]
# count lines with peaks on the lower side
lower_peaks = 0
for start, end in zip(line_starts, line_endings):
line = smooth[start:end]
if np.argmax(line) < len(line)/2:
lower_peaks += 1
print(lower_peaks / len(line_starts))
this prints 0.125 for the given image, so this is not oriented correctly and must be flipped.
Note that this approach might break badly if there are images or anything not organized in lines in the image (maybe math or pictures). Another problem would be too few lines, resulting in bad statistics.
Also different fonts might result in different distributions. You can try this on a few images and see if the approach works. I don't have enough data.

You can use the Alyn module. To install it:
pip install alyn
Then to use it to deskew images(Taken from the homepage):
from alyn import Deskew
d = Deskew(
input_file='path_to_file',
display_image='preview the image on screen',
output_file='path_for_deskewed image',
r_angle='offest_angle_in_degrees_to_control_orientation')`
d.run()
Note that Alyn is only for deskewing text.