Book Image

OpenCV 3.x with Python By Example - Second Edition

By : Gabriel Garrido Calvo, Prateek Joshi
Book Image

OpenCV 3.x with Python By Example - Second Edition

By: Gabriel Garrido Calvo, Prateek Joshi

Overview of this book

Computer vision is found everywhere in modern technology. OpenCV for Python enables us to run computer vision algorithms in real time. With the advent of powerful machines, we have more processing power to work with. Using this technology, we can seamlessly integrate our computer vision applications into the cloud. Focusing on OpenCV 3.x and Python 3.6, this book will walk you through all the building blocks needed to build amazing computer vision applications with ease. We start off by manipulating images using simple filtering and geometric transformations. We then discuss affine and projective transformations and see how we can use them to apply cool advanced manipulations to your photos like resizing them while keeping the content intact or smoothly removing undesired elements. We will then cover techniques of object tracking, body part recognition, and object recognition using advanced techniques of machine learning such as artificial neural network. 3D reconstruction and augmented reality techniques are also included. The book covers popular OpenCV libraries with the help of examples. This book is a practical tutorial that covers various examples at different levels, teaching you about the different functions of OpenCV and their actual implementation. By the end of this book, you will have acquired the skills to use OpenCV and Python to develop real-world computer vision applications.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Contributors
Packt Upsell
Preface

Why do we care about keypoints?


Image content analysis refers to the process of understanding the content of an image so that we can take some action based on that. Let's take a step back and talk about how humans do it. Our brain is an extremely powerful machine that can do complicated things very quickly. When we look at something, our brain automatically creates a footprint based on the interesting aspects of that image. We will discuss what interesting means as we progress through this chapter.

For now, an interesting aspect is something that's distinct in that region. If we call a point interesting, then there shouldn't be another point in its neighborhood that satisfies the constraints. Let's consider the following image:

Now, close your eyes and try to visualize this image. Do you see something specific? Can you recollect what's in the left half of the image? Not really! The reason for this is that the image doesn't have any interesting information. When our brain looks at something...