Learning OpenCV 4 Computer Vision with Python 3: Get to grips with tools, techniques, and algorithms for computer vision and machine learning

by Joseph Howse, Joe Minichino

Computer vision is a rapidly evolving science, encompassing diverse applications and techniques. This book will not only help those who are getting started with computer vision but also experts in the domain. You’ll be able to put theory into practice by building apps with OpenCV 4 and Python 3.
You’ll start by understanding OpenCV 4 and how to set it up with Python 3 on various platforms. Next, you’ll learn how to perform basic operations such as reading, writing, manipulating, and displaying still images, videos, and camera feeds. From taking you through image processing, video analysis, and depth estimation and segmentation, to helping you gain practice by building a GUI app, this book ensures you’ll have opportunities for hands-on activities. Next, you’ll tackle two popular challenges: face detection and face recognition. You’ll also learn about object classification and machine learning concepts, which will enable you to create and use object detectors and classifiers, and even track objects in movies or video camera feed. Later, you’ll develop your skills in 3D tracking and augmented reality. Finally, you’ll cover ANNs and DNNs, learning how to develop apps for recognizing handwritten digits and classifying a person's gender and age.
By the end of this book, you’ll have the skills you need to execute real-world computer vision projects.
What you will learn

Install and familiarize yourself with OpenCV 4's Python 3 bindings
Understand image processing and video analysis basics
Use a depth camera to distinguish foreground and background regions
Detect and identify objects, and track their motion in videos
Train and use your own models to match images and classify objects
Detect and recognize faces, and classify their gender and age
Build an augmented reality application to track an image in 3D
Work with machine learning models, including SVMs, artificial neural networks (ANNs), and deep neural networks (DNNs)

372 pages, Paperback

Published February 20, 2020

About the author

Joseph Howse writes fiction, as well as technical books on computer programming and image analysis. He lives in a Nova Scotian fishing village, where he chats with his cats and nurtures an orchard of hardy fruit trees. His debut novel, The Girl in the Water, has won the 2023 Independent Press Award for Literary Fiction, the 2023 IAN Awards for Outstanding Multicultural Fiction, and the 2023 IPPY Awards Bronze Medal for Best Regional Ebook (Fiction). He is currently working on a sequel.

Reviews

[Mohamed Metwalli]

It is a good book!

[Bob Dunbar]

This is a very good overview of OpenCV for intermediate Python users. It covers all the major topics, the prose is very good, the figures and examples are excellent, and the code is modularized in a way that will let you expand it or adapt it to your own projects. The authors also provide online color versions of all the figures in the book, which is a nice touch. I've purchased several books on OpenCV and looked through countless online articles and tutorials, and I would've saved myself a lot of trouble if I had started here first. If you're starting out with OpenCV, you'll want this book in your library.

[Jisha]

Good overview of traditional CV