Locating Text within image

Question

I am currently working on a project and my goal is to locate text in an image. OCR\'ing the text is not my intention as of yet. I want to basically obtain the bounds of text

Answer 1

recognizing text inside an image is indeed a hot topic for researchers in that field, but only begun to grow out of control when captcha's became the "norm" in terms of defense against spam bots. Why use captcha's as protection? well because it is/was very hard to locate (and read) text inside an image!

The reason why I mention captcha's is because the most advancement* is made within that tiny area, and I think that your solution could be best found there. especially because captcha's are indeed about locating text (or something that resembles text) inside a cluttered image and afterwards trying to read the letters correctly.

so if you can find yourself a good open source captcha breaking tool you probably have all you need to continue your quest...
You could probably even throw away the most dificult code that handles the character recognition itself, because those OCR's are used to read distorted text, something you don't have to do.

*: advancement in terms of visible, usable, and practical information for a "non-researcher"