Command Line Usage

Tesseract 'man' page

This page has not been (fully) updated for Tesseract 4.0.

Tesseract --help

Usage:
  tesseract --help | --help-psm | --version
  tesseract  --list-langs [--tessdata-dir PATH]
  tesseract  --print-parameters [options...] [configfile...]
  tesseract  imagename|stdin outputbase|stdout [options...] [configfile...]

OCR options:
  --tessdata-dir PATH   Specify the location of tessdata path.
  --user-words PATH     Specify the location of user words file.
  --user-patterns PATH  Specify the location of user patterns file.
  -l LANG[+LANG]        Specify language(s) used for OCR.
  -c VAR=VALUE          Set value for config variables.
                        Multiple -c arguments are allowed.
  -psm NUM              Specify page segmentation mode.
NOTE: These options must occur before any configfile.

Page segmentation modes:
  0    Orientation and script detection (OSD) only.
  1    Automatic page segmentation with OSD.
  2    Automatic page segmentation, but no OSD, or OCR.
  3    Fully automatic page segmentation, but no OSD. (Default)
  4    Assume a single column of text of variable sizes.
  5    Assume a single uniform block of vertically aligned text.
  6    Assume a single uniform block of text.
  7    Treat the image as a single text line.
  8    Treat the image as a single word.
  9    Treat the image as a single word in a circle.
 10    Treat the image as a single character.

Single options:
  -h, --help            Show this help message.
  --help-psm            Show page segmentation modes.
  -v, --version         Show version information.
  --list-langs          List available languages for tesseract engine.
  --print-parameters    Print tesseract parameters to stdout.

---

Add page break in output

Use the config variable as part of command -c include_page_breaks=1 -c page_separator="[PAGE SEPRATOR]"

Default page separator is the form feed control character.

tesseract -c include_page_breaks=1 input.tiff output

OCR multiple images with one run of tesseract

Prepare a text file that has the path to each image:

path/to/1.png
path/to/2.png
path/to/3.tiff

Save it, and then give its name as input file to Tesseract.

tesseract savedlist output

OCR single page of a multi-page tiff

Use the config variable as part of command -c tessedit_page_number=0

Integrate original image file and detected text into PDF

Use the config variable -c textonly_pdf=1 and Merge your image-only and text-only PDF.

see https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract/issues/660#issuecomment-274213632 for details

---

Simplest Invocation to OCR an image

tesseract imagename outputbase

This uses English as the default language and 3 as the Page Segmentation Mode. The default output format is text.

osd.traineddata, for Orientation and Segmentation and eng.traineddata and other language data files for English should be in the "tessdata" directory. TESSDATA_PREFIX environment variable should be set to the parent directory of "tessdata" directory.

The following command would give the same result as above, if eng.traineddata and osd.traineddata files are in /usr/share/tessdata directory.

tesseract --tessdata-dir /usr/share imagename outputbase -l eng -psm 3

---

Following examples use this image which has text in multiple languages.

Using One Language

Add '-l LANG' to the command where LANG is three character language code from the list of supported languages. If this is not given then English language is assumed by default.

tesseract  --tessdata-dir ./ ./testing/eurotext.png ./testing/eurotext-eng -l eng

Output

The (quick) [brown] {fox} jumps!
Over the $43,456.78 <lazy> #90 dog
& duck/goose, as 12.5% of E-mail
from [email protected] is spam.
Der ,,schnelle” braune Fuchs springt
fiber den faulen Hund. Le renard brun
«rapide» saute par-dessus le chien
paresseux. La volpe marrone rapida
salta sopra i] cane pigro. El zorro
marrén répido salta sobre el perro
perezoso. A raposa marrom répida
salta sobre 0 C50 preguieoso.

Using Multiple Languages

Add '-l LANG[+LANG]' to the command line to use multiple languages together for recognition

tesseract  --tessdata-dir ./ ./testing/eurotext.png ./testing/eurotext-engdeu -l eng+deu

Output

The (quick) [brown] {fox} jumps!
Over the $43,456.78 <lazy> #90 dog
& duck/goose, as 12.5% of E-mail
from [email protected] is spam.
Der „schnelle” braune Fuchs springt
über den faulen Hund. Le renard brun
«rapide» saute par-dessus le chien
paresseux. La volpe marrone rapida
salta sopra il cane pigro. El zorro
marrön räpido salta sobre el perro
perezoso. A raposa marrom räpida
salta sobre o cäo preguieoso.

Order of multiple languages

The output can be different based on the order of languages, so -l eng+hin can give different result than -l hin+eng.

Following examples use a greyscale version of this image which has text in multiple languages - Hindi and English.

Using English as primary language and then Hindi

 tesseract  --tessdata-dir ./ ./testing/bilingual.jpg ./testing/bilingual-enghin -l eng+hin

Output

हिदीसेअंठौजी
HINDI To

ENGLISH
—

Using Hindi as primary language and then English

 tesseract  --tessdata-dir ./ ./testing/bilingual.jpg ./testing/bilingual-hineng -l hin+eng

Output

हिंदी से अंग्रेजी
H I N D I T o

E N G L I S H
—

Searchable pdf output

tesseract  --tessdata-dir ./ ./testing/eurotext.png ./testing/eurotext-eng -l eng pdf

This creates a pdf with the image and a separate searchable text layer with the recognized text.

tesseract  c:\temp\test_ara.jpg  -l ara  -psm 3  c:\temp\test_ara pdf

Files are attached (source JPG and output PDF)

![test_ara.jpg] (https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/17473681/13320324/bc160e22-dbd0-11e5-8090-6f3728fcc06d.jpg) [test_ara.pdf] (https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract/files/146534/test_ara.pdf)

HOCR output

Use 'hocr' config file by adding hocr at the end of the command to get the HOCR output.

tesseract  --tessdata-dir ./ ./testing/eurotext.png ./testing/eurotext-eng -l eng hocr

Output

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
 <head>
  <title></title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
  <meta name='ocr-system' content='tesseract 3.05.00dev' />
  <meta name='ocr-capabilities' content='ocr_page ocr_carea ocr_par ocr_line ocrx_word'/>
</head>
<body>
  <div class='ocr_page' id='page_1' title='image "./testing/eurotext.png"; bbox 0 0 1024 800; ppageno 0'>
   <div class='ocr_carea' id='block_1_1' title="bbox 98 66 918 661">
    <p class='ocr_par' id='par_1_1' lang='eng' title="bbox 98 66 918 661">
     <span class='ocr_line' id='line_1_1' title="bbox 105 66 823 113; baseline 0.015 -18; x_size 39; x_descenders 7; x_ascenders 9"><span class='ocrx_word' id='word_1_1' title='bbox 105 66 178 97; x_wconf 90'>The</span> <span class='ocrx_word' id='word_1_2' title='bbox 205 67 347 106; x_wconf 87'><strong>(quick)</strong></span> <span class='ocrx_word' id='word_1_3' title='bbox 376 69 528 109; x_wconf 89'>[brown]</span> <span class='ocrx_word' id='word_1_4' title='bbox 559 71 663 110; x_wconf 89'>{fox}</span> <span class='ocrx_word' id='word_1_5' title='bbox 687 73 823 113; x_wconf 89'>jumps!</span> 
     </span>
    </p>
   </div>
  </div>
 </body>
</html>

TSV output (Currently available in 3.05-dev in master branch on github)

Use 'tsv' config file by adding tsv at the end of the command to get the TSV output.

tesseract  --tessdata-dir ./ ./testing/eurotext.png ./testing/eurotext-eng -l eng tsv

Output

level	page_num	block_num	par_num	line_num	word_num	left	top	width	height	conf	text
1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	1024	800	-1	
2	1	1	0	0	0	98	66	821	596	-1	
3	1	1	1	0	0	98	66	821	596	-1	
4	1	1	1	1	0	105	66	719	48	-1	
5	1	1	1	1	1	105	66	74	32	90	The
5	1	1	1	1	2	205	67	143	40	87	(quick)
5	1	1	1	1	3	376	69	153	41	89	[brown]
5	1	1	1	1	4	559	71	105	40	89	{fox}
5	1	1	1	1	5	687	73	137	41	89	jumps!
4	1	1	1	2	0	104	115	784	51	-1	
5	1	1	1	2	1	104	115	96	33	91	Over
5	1	1	1	2	2	224	117	60	32	89	the
5	1	1	1	2	3	310	117	224	39	88	$43,456.78
5	1	1	1	2	4	561	121	136	42	92	<lazy>
5	1	1	1	2	5	722	123	70	32	92	#90
5	1	1	1	2	6	818	125	70	41	89	dog

Using different Page Segmentation Modes

The following examples are using this image with text in Devanagari script and Sanskrit language.

tesseract   --tessdata-dir /usr/share testing/san002.png testing/san002-psm6 -l san -psm 6 

Output

विर्व्य 16
ज्यालत्रुखीसह्स्रनामक्तोव्रम्- नामाकळिट्. 191
दुर्गासहस्रनामस्तीत्रम्- १ नामांक्ळिन्नू ॰213
द्रुर्गासहस्रनत्मस्तीन्रम्- २ नामावळिऽ 238
द्दुगसिद्द्स्रनत्मक्तोत्रम्दकाराद्दि(३) नामाव'ळिऽ 263
ट्टुगसिहस्रनामक्तोत्रम्- ४ नामावळिइं 300
पार्वतीं ह्यो) सहस्रनामातोत्रम्- नामावळिऽ’ 329
द्दुर्गानवाक्षरीन्निशतींनत्माव'क्ति 355
द्बुर्गाष्टोत्तरङ्प्तनत्मरतोव्रम्- नामावक्ति 360
र्व्यत्मामस्वोत्रम्- नामाक्ळिऽ 363
अन्नपूण्स्सिहस्रनत्मस्तीत्रम्- नामावक्ति 365
अन्नघूर्गाष्टोत्तस्यातनामस्तीन्रम्- नामावक्ति 394
क्रुलकुर्व्यसहस्रनत्मक्तोत्रम्- कवचम्… नामावळिथ् 397-
कुमारींसहृस्रनामक्तोन्नम्- नामावळिय् 432
गङ्ग’म्यासद्वृस्रनप्मक्तोव्रम्- नाम।वक्ति` 457
गङ्ग’म्याष्टोत्तराप्तनामप्तोत्रम्- नामावळिऽ 488
गङ्गादातनप्तास्तोत्रम्- नामावक्ति 491
यमुनासहस्रनामरतोव्रम्- नम्पावळिय् 493
'शिवगङ्गासद्दृस्रनत्माव'ळि 517
गम्पत्रीसह्स्रनत्मक्तोत्रम्- नाम।व'ळिऽ (१) 531

tesseract   --tessdata-dir /usr/share testing/san002.png testing/san002-psm3 -l san -psm 3

Output

ज्यंग्लत्रुखीसह्स्रनामलोत्रम्- नामावळिट्.
दुर्गासहस्रनामस्तीत्रम्- १ नामाक्ळि
दुर्गासहस्रनत्मस्तीत्र्दुं'म्- २ नामावळिऽ
द्बुगसिद्द्स्रनत्मरत्तोत्रम्दकारादि (३) नामावळि

पार्वतीं ह्यो) सहम्रनम्परतोत्रम्- नामावळिऽ’

फुलकुर्व्यसहस्रनत्मक्तोत्रम्-क्ताचम्-नत्माचळिऽ

गम्यत्रीसह्स्रनत्मक्तोत्रम्-नग्मग्वळिऽ(१)

191
,213

238

300
329
355
360

363.

365

394

397-

432

457

488

491

493

517

531