Tesseract running error

I have a problem with running tesseract-ocr engine on linux. I've downloaded RUS language data and put it to tessdata directory (/usr/local/share/tessdata). When I'm trying to run tesseract with command tesseract blob.jpg out -l rus , it displays an error:

Error opening data file /usr/local/share/tessdata/eng.traineddata

Please make sure the TESSDATA_PREFIX environment variable is set to the parent directory of your "tessdata" directory.

Failed loading language eng
Tesseract couldn't load any languages!

Could not initialize tesseract.

According to compiling guide, I used export TESSDATA_PREFIX='/usr/local/share/' to point my tessdata directory. Maybe I should edit any config files? Tesseract try to load 'eng' data files instead of 'rus'.

Screenshot: http://i.stack.imgur.com/I0Guc.png

You can grab eng.traineddata Github:

wget https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tessdata/raw/main/eng.traineddata

Check https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tessdata for a full list of trained language data.

When you grab the file(s), move them to the /usr/local/share/tessdata folder. Warning: some Linux distributions (such as openSUSE and Ubuntu) may be expecting it in /usr/share/tessdata instead.

# If you got the data from Google, unzip it first!
gunzip eng.traineddata.gz 
# Move the data
sudo mv -v eng.traineddata /usr/local/share/tessdata/

The simpliest way is to install the needed package:

sudo apt-get install tesseract-ocr-eng  #for english
sudo apt-get install tesseract-ocr-tam  #for tamil
sudo apt-get install tesseract-ocr-deu  #for deutsch (German)

As you can notice, it opens the road to others languages (i.e. tesseract-ocr-fra).

I had this error too on the Windows machine.

My solution.

1. Download your language files from https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tessdata/tree/3.04.00

For example, for eng, I downloaded all files with eng prefix.

2. Put them into tessdata directory inside of some folder. Add this folder into System Path variables as TESSDATA_PREFIX.

Result will be System env var: TESSDATA_PREFIX=D:/Java/OCR And OCR folder has tessdata with languages files.

This is a screenshot of the directory:

No previous solution worked for me.

I've installed both by apt-get and manually downloading the tessdata, moved around /usr and so on and no one worked even if i exported the variable thousand times.

Finally, on a last try before start to cry i've tried to pass the path directly to the instance of Tesseract().

In Python: tr = Tesseract("/usr/local/share/tesseract-ocr/") and now it works. To clarify, im using tesserwrap module.

tesseract  --tessdata-dir <tessdata-folder> <image-path> stdout --oem 2 -l <lng>

In my case, the mistakes that I've made or attempts that wasn't a success.

• I cloned the github repo and copied files from there to
  • /usr/local/share/tessdata/
  • /usr/share/tesseract-ocr/tessdata/
  • /usr/share/tessdata/
• Used TESSDATA_PREFIX with above paths
• sudo apt-get install tesseract-ocr-eng

First 2 attempts did not worked because, the files from git clone did not worked for the reasons that I do not know. I am not sure why #3 attempt worked for me.

Finally,

1. I downloaded the eng.traindata file using wget
2. Copied it to some directory
3. Used --tessdata-dir with directory name

Take away for me is to learn the tool well & make use of it, rather than relying on package manager installation & directories

For Ubuntu just run the below command and the Environment variable error will disappear.

command:

export TESSDATA_PREFIX=Path_of_your_tessdata_folder

Command Example:

export TESSDATA_PREFIX=/home/amar/Desktop/OCR/tesseract-4.1.1/tessdata

This command will set the tessdata folder's path to the environment variable with name TESSDATA_PREFIX and the above error will be resolved.

For me the problem was in how I downloaded the train data files. Make sure you get the raw link.

Initially I was using:

wget https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tessdata_best/blob/master/eng.traineddata

When I changed it to:

wget https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tessdata_best/raw/master/eng.traineddata

It worked

You can call tesseract API function from C code:

#include <tesseract/baseapi.h>
#include <tesseract/ocrclass.h>; // ETEXT_DESC

using namespace tesseract;

class TessAPI : public TessBaseAPI {
    public:
    void PrintRects(int len);
};

...
TessAPI *api = new TessAPI();
int res = api->Init(NULL, "rus");
api->SetAccuracyVSpeed(AVS_MOST_ACCURATE);
api->SetImage(data, w0, h0, bpp, stride);
api->SetRectangle(x0,y0,w0,h0);

char *text;
ETEXT_DESC monitor;
api->RecognizeForChopTest(&monitor);
text = api->GetUTF8Text();
printf("text: %s\n", text);
printf("m.count: %s\n", monitor.count);
printf("m.progress: %s\n", monitor.progress);

api->RecognizeForChopTest(&monitor);
text = api->GetUTF8Text();
printf("text: %s\n", text);
...
api->End();

And build this code:

g++ -g -I. -I/usr/local/include -o _test test.cpp -ltesseract_api -lfreeimageplus

(i need FreeImage for picture loading)

I'm using windows OS, I tried all solutions above and none of them work.

Finally, I install Tesseract-OCR on D drive(Where I run my python script from) instead of C drive and it works.

So, if you are using windows, run your python script in the same drive as your Tesseract-OCR.

For Windows Users:

In Environment Variables, add a new variable in system variable with name "TESSDATA_PREFIX" and value is "C:\Program Files (x86)\Tesseract-OCR\tessdata"

I'm using Visual Studio 2017 Community Edition.
I solved this problem by making a directory called tessdata in the Debug directory of my project. Then I put the eng.traineddata file into said directory.

C# developer working on Windows here. What works for me is simply download the file eng.traineddata from the following URL:

https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tessdata/blob/master/eng.traineddata

and copy it to the following directory in my Console Application project:

[Project Directory]\bin\Debug\tessdata

I did manually create the tessdata folder above.

tessdata_dir_config = r'--tessdata-dir "/usr/local/Cellar/tesseract/4.1.1/share/tessdata"'
pytesseract.image_to_string(imgCrop,lang='eng',config=tessdata_dir_config)

Add this to your code :

instance.setDatapath("C:\\somepath\\tessdata");

instance.setLanguage("eng");

How I solved the problem in my Manjaro Xfce:

Message “TesseractError: (1, 'Error opening data file /home/julio/snap/tesseract/common/eng.traineddata Please make sure the TESSDATA_PREFIX environment variable is set to your "tessdata" directory. Failed loading language 'eng' Tesseract couldn't load any languages! Could not initialize tesseract.')”

Then, in my Manjaro, I typed: sudo pacman -S tesseract Then the system installed both the “tesseract” and also a package name “leptonica”

After this step, I thought everything was ok, and tried to run my simple script. However, the error message changed to something like this (it changed the previous “/home” location to other “/usr”-like location): “"Please make sure the TESSDATA_PREFIX environment variable is set to your "tessdata" directory. Failed loading language 'eng' Tesseract couldn't load any languages! Could not initialize tesseract.')"”

Then I realized that there had appeared this message when I installed “tesseract” with pacman: “You must install one of tesseract-data-* packages or whole tesseract-data group”

So, I tried the command: “sudo pacman -S tesseract-data”, and the system presented lots of language options to me. So I’ve chosen some languages, installed as follows, and the module started to work like a charm:

sudo pacman -S tesseract-data-eng

sudo pacman -S tesseract-data-por

sudo pacman -S tesseract-data-fra

sudo pacman -S tesseract-data-spa

I tried some portuguese special characters (like "ão"), that only worked when I used the argument "lang='por'" in the pytesseract.image_to_string(img,lang='por')

As of 2021, My solution for Ubuntu is to download the zip files from https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tessdata_best/releases/tag/4.1.0, extract and copy the neccessary .traineddata files into /usr/local/share/tessdata. This is the default folder for tesseract 4.1.1 to search for trained data.

I had the same problem with DEU language on macOS. I could solve it by installing all additional languages like so:

brew install tesseract-lang

as suggested on https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/tesseract

**IF you have windows OS then please add your TesseractOCR to system variable. Eg..

1. Find the path where Tesseract is installed in your c drive (in my case r"C:\Program Files\Tesseract-OCR\tesseract.exe")** 2)make sure you have the required files ie tessdata, tessdata if not then download it from https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tessdata https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/langdata (At least those languages which you want to convert)
2. past it into the main directory in my case C:\Program Files\Tesseract-OCR 4)Add the path of the directory to your system environment variable for that
   search environment variable in start bar go to environment variable click path in your system environment variable (NOT IN USER ENVIRONMENT VARIABLE) past the path of tesseractocr

thats all...

In Google Colab I resolved the issue in this way:

!sudo apt-get install tesseract-ocr-*

Because if you use this command !sudo apt install tesseract-ocr then it imports 2 languages but when you intend to work on non-English languages then the former command works. Afterwards, use this command !pip install pytesseract You can also check languages in this way !tesseract --list-langs