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