Why Tesseract OCR library (iOS) cannot recognize text at all?

Question

I\'m trying to use Tesseract OCR library in my iOS application. I downloaded tesseract-ios library from github and when I tried to recognize a simple text image

Answer 1

whatever @ Adam Richardson explained is correct along with that add this 1) scaleimage method for increase size of the image(dimensions increase)

func scaleImage(image: UIImage, maxDimension: CGFloat) -> UIImage {

    var scaledSize = CGSize(width: maxDimension, height: maxDimension)
    var scaleFactor: CGFloat

    if image.size.width > image.size.height {
        scaleFactor = image.size.height / image.size.width
        scaledSize.width = maxDimension
        scaledSize.height = scaledSize.width * scaleFactor
    } else {
        scaleFactor = image.size.width / image.size.height
        scaledSize.height = maxDimension
        scaledSize.width = scaledSize.height * scaleFactor
    }

    UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(scaledSize)
    image.draw(in: CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: scaledSize.width, height: scaledSize.height))
    let scaledImage = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext()
    UIGraphicsEndImageContext()

    return scaledImage!
}

2) store this eng.traineddata language file in filemanager

 func storeLanguageFile() throws{
    var fileManager: FileManager = FileManager.default
    let nsDocumentDirectory = FileManager.SearchPathDirectory.documentDirectory
    let nsUserDomainMask = FileManager.SearchPathDomainMask.userDomainMask
    let docDirectory = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(nsDocumentDirectory, nsUserDomainMask, true)[0] as NSString
    let path: String = docDirectory.appendingPathComponent("/tessdata/eng.traineddata")
    if fileManager.fileExists(atPath: path){
        var data: NSData = NSData.dataWithContentsOfMappedFile((Bundle.main.resourcePath?.appending("/tessdata/eng.traineddata"))!)! as! NSData
        var error: NSError
        try FileManager.default.createDirectory(atPath: docDirectory.appendingPathComponent("/tessdata"), withIntermediateDirectories: true, attributes: nil)
        data.write(toFile: path, atomically: true)
    }
}

3) after that you can use https://github.com/BradLarson/GPUImage for increase clarity of the image

you can use this

func preprocessedImage(for tesseract: G8Tesseract!, sourceImage: UIImage!) -> UIImage! {
    var stillImageFilter: GPUImageAdaptiveThresholdFilter = GPUImageAdaptiveThresholdFilter()
    stillImageFilter.blurRadiusInPixels = 4.0
    var filterImage: UIImage = stillImageFilter.image(byFilteringImage: sourceImage)
    return filterImage
}

these 3 steps will help you to increase the accuracy of the tesseract upto 60 ~ 70 %