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An output image file with red contours of all objects

I have the following code:
import cv2 as cv
import numpy as np
image = cv.imread("input1.jpg")
img_gray = cv.cvtColor(image, cv.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
img_denoised = cv.GaussianBlur(img_gray,(5,5),2)
ret, thresh = cv.threshold(img_denoised, 216, 255, cv.THRESH_BINARY)
kernel = np.ones((1,1),np.uint8)
opening = cv.dilate(thresh, kernel)
opening = cv.erode(opening, kernel)
# detect the contours on the binary image using cv.CHAIN_APPROX_NONE
contours, hierarchy = cv.findContours(image=opening, mode=cv.RETR_TREE, method=cv.CHAIN_APPROX_NONE)
for i in contours:
x, y, w, h = cv.boundingRect(i)
cv.drawContours(image, [i], -1, (0, 0, 255), 2)
cv.imshow("A.jpg", image)
cv.waitKey(0)
cv.destroyAllWindows()
Output:
enter image description here
It only shows the stars with a red contours but I want all the text to have a red contours, including the background. Here is the original file:
enter image description here
Many thanks in advance!

I messed with this a bit and the best outcome I could get was the following, I think with some tweaking you could ignore the shading, as I'm converting it to grayscale it seems to be dropping the correct contour on the shapes, but the text is working as expected;
import cv2
import numpy as np
src = cv2.imread('c:\\input1.jpg')
gray = cv2.cvtColor(src, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
# blur
blur = cv2.GaussianBlur(gray, (3, 3), 0)
# canny edge
canny = cv2.Canny(blur, 100, 200)
# dilate
kernel = np.ones((5, 5))
dilate = cv2.dilate(canny, kernel, iterations=1)
# find contours
contours, hierarchy = cv2.findContours(
dilate, cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_NONE)
# draw contours
cv2.drawContours(src, contours, -1, (0, 255, 0), 3)
cv2.imshow("a.jpg", src)
cv2.waitKey()

Detect colorful dots in image in python?

I'm trying to detect colorful dots on a white/gray background. The dots are 3 different colors (yellow, purple, blue) of different sizes. Here is the original image:
I converted the image to HSV and found lower and upper bounds for each image then applied contour detection to find those dots. The following code detects most of the dots:
import cv2
import numpy as np
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
img = cv2.imread('image1_1.png')
hsv = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2HSV)
lower_yellow = np.array([22,25,219])
upper_yellow = np.array([25,75,225])
lower_purple = np.array([141,31,223])
upper_purple = np.array([143,83,225])
lower_blue = np.array([92,32,202])
upper_blue = np.array([96,36,208])
mask_blue = cv2.inRange(hsv, lower_blue, upper_blue)
mask_purple = cv2.inRange(hsv, lower_purple, upper_purple)
mask_yellow = cv2.inRange(hsv, lower_yellow, upper_yellow)
res_blue = cv2.bitwise_and(img,img, mask=mask_blue)
res_purple = cv2.bitwise_and(img,img, mask=mask_purple)
res_yellow = cv2.bitwise_and(img,img, mask=mask_yellow)
gray_blue = cv2.cvtColor(res_blue, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
gray_purple = cv2.cvtColor(res_purple, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
gray_yellow = cv2.cvtColor(res_yellow, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
_,thresh_blue = cv2.threshold(gray_blue,10,255,cv2.THRESH_BINARY)
_,thresh_purple = cv2.threshold(gray_purple,10,255,cv2.THRESH_BINARY)
_,thresh_yellow = cv2.threshold(gray_yellow,10,255,cv2.THRESH_BINARY)
contours_blue, hierarhy1 = cv2.findContours(thresh_blue,cv2.RETR_TREE,cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
contours_purple, hierarhy2 = cv2.findContours(thresh_purple,cv2.RETR_TREE,cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
contours_yellow, hierarhy3 = cv2.findContours(thresh_yellow,cv2.RETR_TREE,cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
result = img.copy()
cv2.drawContours(result, contours_blue, -1, (0, 0, 255), 2)
cv2.drawContours(result, contours_purple, -1, (0, 0, 255), 2)
cv2.drawContours(result, contours_yellow, -1, (0, 0, 255), 2)
cv2.imwrite("_allContours.jpg", result)
Here are the detected contours:
The problem is that some of the colored dots are not detected. I understand by fine-tuning the color ranges (lower and upper) it's possible to detect more dots. But that is very time consuming and not generalizable to similar images. For example the following image looks similar to the first image above and has the same colorful dots but the background is slightly different, once I ran it through above code it was not able to detect even one of the dots. Am I on the right track? Is there a more scalable and reliable solution with less need to tune color parameters in order to solve this problem? Here is the other image I tried:

I would suggest simply using adaptiveThreshold in Python/OpenCV
import cv2
import numpy as np
# read image
img = cv2.imread("dots.png")
# convert img to grayscale
gray = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
# do adaptive threshold on gray image
thresh = cv2.adaptiveThreshold(gray, 255, cv2.ADAPTIVE_THRESH_MEAN_C, cv2.THRESH_BINARY, 25, 6)
# write results to disk
cv2.imwrite("dots_thresh.jpg", thresh)
# display it
cv2.imshow("thresh", thresh)
cv2.waitKey(0)

How to remove background gray drawings from image in OPENCV python

I need to remove the gray drawing from the image background and only need symbols drawn over it.
Here is my code to do that using morphologyEx but it did not remove the entire gray drawing that is in background.
img_path = "images/new_drawing.png"
img = cv2.imread(img_path)
kernel = np.ones((2,2), dtype=np.uint8)
result = cv2.morphologyEx(img, cv2.MORPH_CLOSE, kernel, iterations=1)
cv2.imshow('Without background',result);
cv2.waitKey(0)
cv2.destroyAllWindows()
I tried this also and got expected results in grayscale but unable to convert it to BGR.
Here is my code
img = cv2.imread('images/new_drawing.png')
gray_img = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
med_blur = cv2.medianBlur(gray_img, ksize=3)
_, thresh = cv2.threshold(med_blur, 190, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY)
blending = cv2.addWeighted(gray_img, 0.5, thresh, 0.9, gamma=0)
cv2.imshow("blending", blending);
Also i used contours to identify symbols and draw them to white image but problem is that it also identify background drawing that i don't want.
Input image
Expected output image
Also the drawing will be always in gray color as in image.
Please help me out to get better result.

You are almost there...
Instead of using cv2.inRange to "catch" the non-gray pixel I suggest using cv2.inRange for catching all the pixels you want to change to white color:
mask = cv2.inRange(hsv, (0, 0, 100), (255, 5, 255))
The hue range is irrelevant.
The saturation is close to zero (shades of gray).
The brightness excludes the black pixels (you like to keep).
In order to get a nicer solution, I also used the following additional stages:
Build a mask of non-black pixels:
nzmask = cv2.inRange(hsv, (0, 0, 5), (255, 255, 255))
Erode the above mask:
nzmask = cv2.erode(nzmask, np.ones((3,3)))
Apply and operation between mask and nzmask:
mask = mask & nzmask
The above stages keeps the gray pixels around the black text.
Without the above stages, the black text gets thinner.
The last stage is replacing mask pixels with white:
new_img = img.copy()
new_img[np.where(mask)] = 255
Here is the code:
import numpy as np
import cv2
img_path = "new_drawing.png"
img = cv2.imread(img_path)
hsv = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2HSV)
mask = cv2.inRange(hsv, (0, 0, 100), (255, 5, 255))
cv2.imshow('mask before and with nzmask', mask);
# Build mask of non black pixels.
nzmask = cv2.inRange(hsv, (0, 0, 5), (255, 255, 255))
# Erode the mask - all pixels around a black pixels should not be masked.
nzmask = cv2.erode(nzmask, np.ones((3,3)))
cv2.imshow('nzmask', nzmask);
mask = mask & nzmask
new_img = img.copy()
new_img[np.where(mask)] = 255
cv2.imshow('mask', mask);
cv2.imshow('new_img', new_img);
cv2.waitKey(0)
cv2.destroyAllWindows()
Result:

Here is one way to do that in Python/OpenCV.
Read the input
Convert to HSV and separate channels
Threshold the saturation channel
Threshold the value channel and invert
Combine the two threshold images as a mask
Apply the mask to the input to write white where the mask is black
Save the result
Input:
import cv2
import numpy as np
# read image
img = cv2.imread('symbols.png')
# convert image to hsv colorspace
hsv = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2HSV)
h, s, v = cv2.split(hsv)
# threshold saturation image
thresh1 = cv2.threshold(s, 92, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY)[1]
# threshold value image and invert
thresh2 = cv2.threshold(v, 128, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY)[1]
thresh2 = 255 - thresh2
# combine the two threshold images as a mask
mask = cv2.add(thresh1,thresh2)
# use mask to remove lines in background of input
result = img.copy()
result[mask==0] = (255,255,255)
# display IN and OUT images
cv2.imshow('IMAGE', img)
cv2.imshow('SAT', s)
cv2.imshow('VAL', v)
cv2.imshow('THRESH1', thresh1)
cv2.imshow('THRESH2', thresh2)
cv2.imshow('MASK', mask)
cv2.imshow('RESULT', result)
cv2.waitKey(0)
cv2.destroyAllWindows()
# save output image
cv2.imwrite('symbols_thresh1.png', thresh1)
cv2.imwrite('symbols_thresh2.png', thresh2)
cv2.imwrite('symbols_mask.png', mask)
cv2.imwrite('symbols_cleaned.png', result)
Saturation channel thresholded:
Value channel thresholded and inverted:
Mask:
Result:

Difficulty extracting characters using MSER in images which have borders around the text

I am trying to develop a OCR system. I am trying to use MSER in order to extract character from an image and then passing the characters into a CNN to recognize those characters. Here is my code for character extraction:
import cv2
import numpy as np
# create MSER object
mser = cv2.MSER_create()
# read the image
img = cv2.imread('textArea01.png')
# convert to gray scale
gray = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
# store copy of the image
vis = img.copy()
# detect regions in the image
regions,_ = mser.detectRegions(gray)
# find convex hulls of the regions and draw them onto the original image
hulls = [cv2.convexHull(p.reshape(-1, 1, 2)) for p in regions]
cv2.polylines(vis, hulls, 1, (0, 255, 0))
# create mask for the detected region
mask = np.zeros((img.shape[0], img.shape[1], 1), dtype=np.uint8)
mask = cv2.dilate(mask, np.ones((150, 150), np.uint8))
for contour in hulls:
cv2.drawContours(mask, [contour], -1, (255, 255, 255), -1)
#this is used to find only text regions, remaining are ignored
text_only = cv2.bitwise_and(img, img, mask=mask)
cv2.imshow('img', vis)
cv2.waitKey(0)
cv2.imshow('mask', mask)
cv2.waitKey(0)
cv2.imshow('text', text_only)
cv2.waitKey(0)
This is working fine for most images, but for some images like this:
The outer border is also detected as a region and the contour is drawn in the mask such that all area inside the border is detected as text region. So, the contours inside have no effect. How do I prevent this so that only the text is detected?
Hulls detected:
and the mask as a result:

My result using this code:
import cv2
import numpy as np
img = cv2.imread("img.png")
# grayscale
gray = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
cv2.imshow('gray', gray)
# binary
# ret, thresh = cv2.threshold(gray, 250, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY_INV)
thresh = cv2.adaptiveThreshold(gray, 255, cv2.ADAPTIVE_THRESH_MEAN_C, cv2.THRESH_BINARY_INV, 35, 180)
cv2.imshow('threshold', thresh)
# dilation
kernel = np.ones((1, 1), np.uint8)
img_dilation = cv2.dilate(thresh, kernel, iterations=1)
cv2.imshow('dilated', img_dilation)
# find contours
# cv2.findCountours() function changed from OpenCV3 to OpenCV4: now it have only two parameters instead of 3
cv2MajorVersion = cv2.__version__.split(".")[0]
# check for contours on thresh
if int(cv2MajorVersion) >= 4:
ctrs, hier = cv2.findContours(img_dilation.copy(), cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
else:
im2, ctrs, hier = cv2.findContours(img_dilation.copy(), cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
# sort contours
sorted_ctrs = sorted(ctrs, key=lambda ctr: cv2.boundingRect(ctr)[0])
for i, ctr in enumerate(sorted_ctrs):
# Get bounding box
x, y, w, h = cv2.boundingRect(ctr)
# Getting ROI
roi = img[y:y + h, x:x + w]
# show ROI
# cv2.imshow('segment no:'+str(i),roi)
cv2.rectangle(img, (x, y), (x + w, y + h), (0, 255, 0), 1)
# if you want to save the letters without green bounding box, comment the line above
if w > 5:
cv2.imwrite('C:\\Users\\PC\\Desktop\\output\\{}.png'.format(i), roi)
cv2.imshow('marked areas', img)
cv2.waitKey(0)

You can have a threshold on the contour area so that it ignores all shapes that cover more than a certain area in the image.
for contour in hulls:
if cv.contourArea(contour) < ThresholdArea:
continue
cv2.drawContours(mask, [contour], -1, (255, 255, 255), -1)
#this is used to find only text regions, remaining are ignored
text_only = cv2.bitwise_and(img, img, mask=mask)

Filling in Circles in OpenCV

I've been struggling with this for a while. I've been trying to figure out some sort of a way in OpenCV in Python to fill in while circles in an image that's entirely black and white.
To be clear this image has been tresholded using adaptive thresholding but now I have these rings which I'd like to be able to fill in. Ideally whatever algorithm is used to fill in circles should be able for both sets of pictures I included.
If anyone could offer any guidance in this regard I'd greatly appreciate it.
Before Algorithm:
After Algorithm:
Before Algorithm:
After Algorithm:

A simple search in Google would have given you this article, which answers exactly your question.
I adopted that solution for your input:
import cv2
import numpy as np
# Read image
im_in = cv2.imread("circles.jpg", cv2.IMREAD_GRAYSCALE)
# Threshold
th, im_th = cv2.threshold(im_in, 127, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY)
# Copy the thresholded image
im_floodfill = im_th.copy()
# Mask used to flood filling.
# NOTE: the size needs to be 2 pixels bigger on each side than the input image
h, w = im_th.shape[:2]
mask = np.zeros((h+2, w+2), np.uint8)
# Floodfill from point (0, 0)
cv2.floodFill(im_floodfill, mask, (0,0), 255)
# Invert floodfilled image
im_floodfill_inv = cv2.bitwise_not(im_floodfill)
# Combine the two images to get the foreground
im_out = im_th | im_floodfill_inv
# Display images.
cv2.imwrite("circles_filled.png", im_out)
Input file circles.png:
Output file circles_filled.png:

You can also fill the circles by drawing the contours.
import cv2
import numpy as np
#Run Main
if __name__ == "__main__" :
image = cv2.imread("circle.jpg", -1)
gray = cv2.cvtColor(image, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
ret,thresh = cv2.threshold(gray, 200, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY)
_,contours,_ = cv2.findContours(thresh, cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_NONE)
cv2.drawContours(image, contours, -1, (255,255,255), thickness=-1)
cv2.namedWindow('Image', cv2.WINDOW_NORMAL)
cv2.imshow('Image', image)
cv2.waitKey(0)
cv2.destroyAllWindows()