The Setup
Introduction to OpenCV
What is Computer Vision?
If you were to present an image of a tree to a computer, a computer would have no way of recognizing that the object in question is indeed a tree. To take things a step further, the computer would not be able to even understand what the definition of an object is. So what data can be extracted from an image that a computer can understand? Luckily a computer can understand the pixels that make up the image and their associated RGB values. This is what makes much of the foundation for computer vision: Using the pixel values of an image to allow computers to make informed decisions. Understanding this, we can write programs and make definitions to make it so a computer can recognize different objects such as trees by utilizing and manipulating the pixel values.
What is OpenCV?
When it comes to computer vision, OpenCV is an open-source library that is widely used and sponsored by the likes of Microsoft and Google. It contains a myriad of functions that can assist you in creating programs that are designed to handle tasks related to computer vision.
How do I get started?
First, open your Visual Studio Code program and open a new program and go down to the terminal window.
Then you will want to enter the following command into the terminal window: pip install opencv-python
This will go ahead and install the OpenCV library into your Visual Studio Code, and from there, you can import the library in any program you desire.
When you import the library it will be called cv2, so you will type in "import cv2" at the top of your program when you need to do so.
Pre-Assignment
Make a folder in your directory called "Photos"
You can do this by clicking the new folder icon at the top of the directory.
Then, download the picture in the pre-assignment folder, and move it to your photos directory.
Make sure the image is in .jpg format
Copy name of the image (not the .jpg part just the name). You will need this for the next module.
NOTE: For the following modules the code builds on the previous module's work, so please keep all of the code in one file.