Python | Using PIL ImageGrab and PyTesseract

Last Updated : 13 Oct, 2019

ImageGrab and PyTesseract

ImageGrab is a Python module that helps to capture the contents of the screen. PyTesseract is an Optical Character Recognition(OCR) tool for Python. Together they can be used to read the contents of a section of the screen. Installation -

Pillow (a newer version of PIL)
pip install Pillow
PyTesseract
pip install pytesseract
Apart from this, a tesseract executable needs to be installed.

Implementation of code

The following functions were primarily used in the code -

pytesseract.image_to_string(image, lang=**language**) - Takes the image and searches for words of the language in their text. cv2.cvtColor(image, **colour conversion**) - Used to make the image monochrome(using cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY). ImageGrab.grab(bbox=**Coordinates of the area of the screen to be captured**) - Used to repeatedly(using a loop) capture a specific part of the screen.

The objectives of the code are:

To use a loop to repeatedly capture a part of the screen.
To convert the captured image into grayscale.
Use PyTesseract to read the text in it.

Code : Python code to use ImageGrab and PyTesseract

Python3

# cv2.cvtColor takes a numpy ndarray as an argument
import numpy as nm

import pytesseract

# importing OpenCV
import cv2

from PIL import ImageGrab


def imToString():

    # Path of tesseract executable
    pytesseract.pytesseract.tesseract_cmd ='**Path to tesseract executable**'
    while(True):

        # ImageGrab-To capture the screen image in a loop. 
        # Bbox used to capture a specific area.
        cap = ImageGrab.grab(bbox =(700, 300, 1400, 900))

        # Converted the image to monochrome for it to be easily 
        # read by the OCR and obtained the output String.
        tesstr = pytesseract.image_to_string(
                cv2.cvtColor(nm.array(cap), cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY), 
                lang ='eng')
        print(tesstr)

# Calling the function
imToString()