I know such a thing exists, but not really sure what the proper name is for googling!

I'm looking for a program that will read the number (bib numbers etc) from a photograph. If it puts the number at the end of the image number in my file, better still. I use a Canon program for downloading from the camera which allows me to cutomise the titles.

Preferably free, but will pay if it's good. Thanks.

Anyone???? Please, pretty, pretty please????

You're looking for OCR software?

I don't know, what's that? Not so much what's that, but does it read characters from a photo?

optical character recognition. Normally used for scanning documents, but @m sure it'll work the same way if you can find one suitably oriented. Dont know of any, especially not free ones, but I'll be they're out there – we had to write a basic one in the 2nd year of my engineering degree course! OCR into google should help narrow the field.

Optical Character Recognition. It recognised characters from pictures. SHould do letters as well as numbers. Don't know what is about for free though

Ok, cool. so that's what it's called then. I tried something lastnight which was crap. Everything else I found in google was barcode reading or number plate recognition. Would they be OK?

I'll have another google tonight.

Thanks

Ok, cool. so that's what it's called then.

OCR software

OCR of bibs from colour pictures – can be done but actually a little tricky. Say you get the numbers read, how are you going to transfer the data (which will probably be output as a text file for each picture i.e. 0001.jpg will produce 0001.txt file that will have the number in it – along with some other stuff it's managed to 'read') into your file names?
How many photos are you talking about?

Barcode reading will be no good and I'd imagine number pate recognition software would be expensive

you could do this in Matlab pretty easily. unfortunately, this is only really of use if you have matlab at work as it costs a fortune!

i'd be very suprised if someone hasn't already developed a peice of software to do exactly what you're after.

here is a paper describing exactly what you're after!
http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/mscproj/reports/0607/nguyen.pdf.gz

even has a pic of a biker in it

How many photos are you talking about?

Currently doing it manually on 1020 photos.

Say you get the numbers read, how are you going to transfer the data

Dunno, you tell me. 😉

0001.jpg will produce 0001.txt file that will have the number in it

So not really what I'm looking for then, I was hoping it could/would add an extension to an existing file name.

Ah well, worth a try.

HoratioHufnagel – Member

here is a paper describing exactly what you're after!
http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/mscproj/reports/0607/nguyen.pdf.gz

even has a pic of a biker in it

Thanks for that, just having a quick read, I'll get back to you in a couple days!!! 😉

[Edit] That looks perfect, a more detailed read later, thanks.

May be possible with scilab (free copy-ish thing of matlab) with the right toolbox.

If you want to send me a picture I'll see what I can do, I have forms recognition software that may be a able to help. My email addy in profile.

TBH considering the number of complicating factors (missing digits, slants, multiple competitors etc) I think that unless you're doing this day in day out as a job, time spent finding an automatic solution is wasted, humans are incredibly good at such tasks.

coffeeking – Member

TBH considering the number of complicating factors (missing digits, slants, multiple competitors etc) I think that unless you're doing this day in day out as a job, time spent finding an automatic solution is wasted, humans are incredibly good at such tasks.

I completely agree, having had a quick look at the document from HoratioHufnagel there is a bit of detail about that and includes font types, sizes etc. Cost clearly is relevant but at the moment I'm going through about 1,000 pics. 😯 Probably about 4 hours work in total…

Hmmmmmm……… tricky.

Yep, frankly you're better of doing it by hand (that way you can integrate the number into the filename.
Part of our business is the capture of data from sections of scanned images and it is difficult at times – sometimes it just works out better to do the data capture by hand (or many hands when your talking 10,000's of images).