Introduction to OpenCV

OpenCV, also known as the Open Source Computer Vision library, is the most commonly used computer vision library. Primarily written in C++, it's also commonly used in Python, thanks to its Python wrappers. Over the years, OpenCV has been through multiple revisions and its current version is 4.2.0 (which is the version we are going to use in this book). What makes it different from other computer vision libraries is the fact that it's fast and easy to use, it provides support for libraries such as QT and OpenGL, and most importantly, it provides hardware acceleration for Intel processors. These powerful features/benefits make OpenCV the perfect choice for understanding the various concepts of computer vision and implementing them. Apart from OpenCV, we will also use NumPy for some basic computation and Matplotlib for visualization, wherever required.

Note

Refer to the Preface for NumPy and OpenCV installation instructions.

Let's start by...