Open Source Computer Vision Library

What is OpenCV

OpenCV means Open Source Computer Vision Library. It is a collection of C functions and a few C++ classes that implement many popular Image Processing and Computer Vision algorithms.

OpenCV Book

The official book for OpenCV is published by O'Reilly Press Learning OpenCV Computer Vision with the OpenCV Library by Gary Bradski and Adrian Kaehler http://www.amazon.com/Learning-OpenCV-Computer-Vision-Library/dp/0596516134

This book is:

  1. A tutorial on computer vision in general
  2. A user's guide to OpenCV
  3. A source of useful working sample code and detailed function descriptions.

The key features

OpenCV provides cross-platform middle-to-high level API that includes about 300 functions and a few C++ classes. Also there are constantly improving Python bindings to OpenCV, see interfaces/swig/python and samples/python. OpenCV has no strict dependencies on external libraries, though it can use some (such as libjpeg, ffmpeg, GTK+ etc.) when it is possible.

OpenCV is free for both non-commercial and commercial use (see the license for details).

OpenCV can be built with Intel® Integrated Performance Primitives (IPP). This makes it fast on all the architectures supported by the library, where the optimal code for each host architecture is chosen at runtime. More information about IPP can be retrieved at http://www.intel.com/software/products/ipp/index.htm

Then, OpenCV itself can be built with OpenMP support, and, starting with v2.0, OpenCV includes SSE2-optimized code, so many of the functions run significantly faster on the modern 32-bit x86 and 64-bit x64 platforms, and even faster on dual-, quad- and many-core systems.

Who created it

The list of authors and major contributors can be found at http://opencv.willowgarage.com/wiki/Contributors.

What's New

See the ChangeLog.

Where to get OpenCV

Go http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/opencvlibrary. If it does not work, type "OpenCV" in Google (http://www.google.com).

How to build it

See the installation guide: http://opencv.willowgarage.com/wiki/InstallGuide.

If you have a problem with installing/running/using OpenCV

  1. Visit OpenCV Wiki-pages at http://opencv.willowgarage.com/wiki/ and look for the information there (and/or add it when you have found a solution)
  2. Search through OpenCV archives at www.yahoogroups.com (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OpenCV/)
  3. Join OpenCV mailing list at yahoo groups (see FAQs on how to do it) and mail your questions (the mailing list will probably migrate to OpenCV's SourceForge site)
  4. Look at the OpenCV sample code, read the reference manual (offline in PDF or online)