Getting Haar cascade data
Once you have a copy of the source code of OpenCV 3, you will find a folder, data/haarcascades
.
This folder contains all the XML files used by the OpenCV face detection engine to detect faces in still images, videos, and camera feeds.
Once you find haarcascades
, create a directory for your project; in this folder, create a subfolder called cascades
, and copy the following files from haarcascades
into cascades
:
haarcascade_profileface.xml haarcascade_righteye_2splits.xml haarcascade_russian_plate_number.xml haarcascade_smile.xml haarcascade_upperbody.xml
As their names suggest, these cascades are for tracking faces, eyes, noses, and mouths. They require a frontal, upright view of the subject. We will use them later when building a face detector. If you are curious about how these data sets are generated, refer to Appendix B, Generating Haar Cascades for Custom Targets, OpenCV Computer Vision with Python. With a lot of patience and a powerful computer, you can make your...