Customer Reviews

Learning OpenCV: Computer Vision with the OpenCV Library

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is excellent at exposing the reader to the various methods available in OpenCV and showing via code examples how to use each one. The author also gives you the website where you can look at the actual source code of each method shown. This is helpful since, for example, if you want to know exactly how the code is going about calculating the Fundamental Matrix, it is difficult to determine this by reading the book alone.

This book would be most useful to someone who already has a fundamental understanding of computer vision and image processing and wants to see how OpenCV will make their programming tasks easier. It does this by coding up well known algorithms into reliable pieces of code that you can use to accomplish more complex tasks. Do not come to this book if you are seeking to learn computer vision. You will only be confused as the author does not offer enough detail to teach you the mathematical foundations. However, I don't think that was his intention at all. Instead it is part user manual, part basic computer vision tutorial and overview, and part idea book. Each chapter is supplemented with excellent and interesting programming exercises that test your knowledge of what has been presented in a practical setting.

For a good basic understanding of computer vision try Computer Vision. To understand the algorithmic underpinnings of 3D computer vision try Introductory Techniques for 3-D Computer Vision. However, before you read either of these you must read Digital Image Processing (3rd Edition), since image processing concepts are fundamental to understanding computer vision tasks. In fact, the two disciplines overlap in many spots. The sad truth of the matter is that no one book will teach you what you need to know to be an effective image scientist. However, this book on OpenCV is essential reading on applying the theory via programming in an effective manner. Highly recommended.

I really love OpenCV. I bought this book and read about 50% of it before starting a project. Initially I found some code on the internet that looked like OpenCV code but was lacking pointers and casts. I learned that this clean code is actually C++ code with heavy use of templates in OpenCV 2.0. Sadly the book is based on OpenCV 1.0, so very little of the code in the book is useable.

At last a practical, pragmatic, accessible book on computer vision (and more!) providing step by step guidance on fundamental computational vision topics, with algorithmic explanation (just what is needed!), and concrete example code snippets. This book is now opening the door to the fabulous world of computational vision to anyone. It gives immediate access to a vast collection of image processing, and machine learning functions, all open source!
The book also includes many references and pointers to other material (such as technical papers), allowing the reader to learn more about any topic covered.
This is a great reference book, that won't just sit on your self.

This is a great book on the library. Although it's rather old and lacks the new C++ API (which, to me, is very similar to the MATLAB image processing toolkit), it provides a rather detailed explanation on the inner workings of the library as well as the math and research papers that backs it up.

If you are just a CV hobbyist, and just want to create some computer vision app with a webcam and don't care about the math, there's tons of resource online on how to use the library effectively.

I give the book four stars instead of five because I wish it would give more programming examples that it does. And sometimes the language is a little hard to understand, I'd usually have to read it several times to grasp the concepts in the book.

Very well written, excellent introduction, beautiful clear figures and illustrations, excellent balance between text, equations, figures, and source code, just the right level of intuitive v.s. technical v.s. mathematical explanation, great explanations of complex algorithmic concepts, with just the right touch of humor here and there to brighten up the dry technical talk, and apparently, a very clear and useful and well designed computer vision software package in that OpenCV, which the author also wrote, with the wonderful advantage that the software is totally free and open source!

The OpenCV library is great and it is nice that somebody put together a book to document it, because the documentation on the opencv wiki is as good as it could be and not well organized. The shortcoming of this book is the extreme verbosity. It is almost excruciating to read because you cannot just skip to the important points because many important points are buried enormous paragraphs that are mostly fluff. The two stars that I give it are entirely for my appreciation of the subject matter.

As a computer instructor and researcher in biometrics and pattern recognition, I welcome this treatise on OpenCV.
Don't even consider opening the pages unless you are familiar with C, its use of structs, pointers, callback functions and the like. You may also be put off by the various mathematical discussions of various advanced computer vision algorithms that have been developed over the last two decades.
OpenCV is an open-source collaborative work. It's partially supported by the Intel corporation, through their quest for advanced algorithms that might be included in its computer chips. Many low-level tools needed for video and image processing are now provided in advanced Intel microprocessors.
The theme of OpenCV is audacious, yet achievable -- that of providing high-quality, high-performance software tools for the many computer vision algorithms that have been published over the years. That has largely been achieved through the clever use of low-level pointer-based tools, accompanied by complete C source code for everything down to the raw processor instructions.
Other good news is that the system provides an easy portal to advanced Intel hardware support, boosting performance to the highest possible level. One can also port OpenCV-based code to Linux, other Unix and Mac platforms -- it is not restricted to Windows.
I've had some trouble with Windows XP, but the image and camera grabbing functions work well under Windows Vista. I've also been able to exploit the OpenCV tools under Windows MFC to support Windows-based applications.
This O'Reilly book provides the background support that you will need to download the OpenCV system from the internet, configure your development environment and start exploring the magic that its tools can provide.
Perhaps you can also contribute to the effort in the way of reporting bugs and providing tool extensions.
I should point out that most of the OpenCV documentation is also available free through the internet. If you like your docmentation scattered around through numerous HTML links, help yourself. I prefer a clear written dialog and an index to follow the underlying logic of all the functions and their variations described in the book.

The OpenCV library provides an amazing opportunity to those interested
in computer vision to begin exploring the field. The only problem with
OpenCV is that it is considerably lacking in straightforward,
easy-to-use documentation. Luckily, that's where this book comes in.

The rapidly expanding OpenCV library is explained in detail throughout
this book and those that read it gain a vast understanding of the
methods and classes provided through the library. With a simple
webcam, the opportunities to utilize the library are nearly endless.
Personally, I used this book as a reference while designing an
Automated Weapon Turret (sentry gun).

The book covers the basics of OpenCV from grabbing a frame from a
video or webcam to complex image processing tasks like stereo vision,
motion tracking, and machine learning. Because the library is
constantly expanding and being rewritten, not all of the information
in the book is up to date, but it certainly helps to establish a
background on how to use the library. While not a necessary tool for
using the OpenCV library, it is definitely a very useful and highly
recommended introduction and reference.

This is a long awaited and outstanding book on OpenCV by Dr.Gary Bradski. Very lucid to read, the key concepts of opencv library are explained in great detail initially in the text book. Given OpenCV library is widely used in industry for computer vision application, following this book well should fetch an undergraduate a job or internship he desires. With tons of functions in OpenCV and detailed explaination in the book about these functions, coding in OpenCV becomes as easy as coding in MATLAB.

I am not a computer Science undergrad so did not have much coding experience few months ago. But reading this book, within couple of days I understood the library well enough to do very advanced biometrics research coding using OpenCV. Full marks to the authors for writing an excellent book. I would recommend this book as a compulsory and supplementary book to every computer vision course. It helps students not only understand the concepts of Vision well but also makes them industry ready (as opposed to using only MATLAB in computer vision classes)

Covers the details quickly so that you can get started coding and covers the right way to access data so that you can maintain the speed necessary for computer vision applications. I've found this book to be really helpful in getting started with OpenCV as well as digging into some of the finer details of some of it's machine learning capabilities.