OCR Image Text Extraction Skill

Extract text from images using Tesseract OCR engine.

Capabilities

• Extract text from image files (PNG, JPG, JPEG, GIF, BMP, TIFF)
• Support for 100+ languages
• Optional image preprocessing for better accuracy
• Output in plain text or JSON format with confidence scores

Usage

Basic OCR

python3 scripts/ocr.py <image_file> <output_file>

With Options

# Specify language (default: eng)
python3 scripts/ocr.py image.png text.txt --lang eng

# Chinese text
python3 scripts/ocr.py image.png text.txt --lang chi_sim

# Multiple languages
python3 scripts/ocr.py image.png text.txt --lang eng+chi_sim

# With image preprocessing (improves accuracy)
python3 scripts/ocr.py image.png text.txt --preprocess

# JSON output with confidence scores
python3 scripts/ocr.py image.png output.json --format json

Download and OCR from URL

# OCR from remote image
python3 scripts/ocr_url.py <image_url> <output_file>

# With options
python3 scripts/ocr_url.py https://example.com/image.jpg text.txt --lang eng --preprocess

Parameters

• image_file / image_url (required): Path to local image or image URL
• output_file (required): Path to output text/JSON file
• --lang: Language code (e.g., eng, chi_sim, jpn, fra, deu). Default: eng
• --preprocess: Apply image preprocessing (grayscale, thresholding) for better accuracy
• --format: Output format (text/json, default: text)

Common Languages

Language	Code
English	eng
Chinese (Simplified)	chi_sim
Chinese (Traditional)	chi_tra
Japanese	jpn
Korean	kor
French	fra
German	deu
Spanish	spa
Russian	rus
Arabic	ara

Supported Image Formats

PNG, JPG, JPEG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, WEBP

Dependencies

• Python 3.8+
• pytesseract
• Pillow (PIL)
• tesseract-ocr (system package)

Installation

# Python packages
pip install pytesseract Pillow

# Tesseract OCR engine
sudo apt-get install tesseract-ocr  # Ubuntu/Debian
sudo yum install tesseract           # CentOS/RHEL
brew install tesseract               # macOS