Tim - Image to Text Converter

[TPReal]

Tim - Image to Text Converter

The program converts an image (jpg or bmp) to a text, which looks like the image in grayscale. You can choose any monospaced font and any font size you want to format the text with, and also any set of allowed characters. The result can be saved as text and then you can format it correctly in a text editor, or you can save the image of the text already correctly formatted.

The program was written in C++Builder 2006 and might need some dll's and bpl's to run. They might be available for download here: http://etonne.110mb.com/files/libs.zip
Put them in the program directory, or in your system directory.

[tomos]

wow, looks really beautiful that text 

[CodeTRUCKER]

Nice!  Would you mind explaining the algorithm used to determine the density of the characters?  That is if it is not proprietary.

[TPReal]

I'm glad you like it

Character density algorithm

Calculating the density of characters was rather easy in Borland's IDE. Let im be an image, then:

Code: (cpp)

im->Canvas->Font=font_you_use_for_conversion;
int width=im->Canvas->TextWidth('x'),height=im->Canvas->TextHeight('x');

Now we have the size of a character. The font is monospaced so I can use 'x' or any other character. Now for ch being each character in turn, I clear the image, then print the character on it:

Code: (cpp)

im->Canvas->TextOutA(10,10,ch);
int counter=0;

Then in loop where i changes from, say, 0 to width+10 and j from 0 to height+10:

Code: (cpp)

counter+=im->Canvas->Pixels[i][j]&0x0000FF;

Finally, the density of ink for this character is:

Code: (cpp)

1-(double)counter/255/width/height

Note that the area that you check inside the (i;j) loop must be greater than the character width*height rectangle because a lot of characters exceed this size. The size is used only to determine the horizontal and vertical distance between characters.

Note also that just counting black pixels in the loop is not a good idea, because some fonts, especially small sized (like 2 or 3) include also some gray pixels which also have to be counted in.

Finally I cut the input image into width*height rectangles and for each of them I calculate the density of ink in a similar way as I did it for characters (only now I have to take into account all colors, and also the color weights) and for each rectangle I use the character that fits best.

This is not the actual code of the program, but I think it is more or less correct and shows the main idea

[CodeTRUCKER]

Thank you for the explanation.  I learned something!

[varunkumar]

Good utility, also free. 

[PantherDave]

Well it looks cool, but I can't get it to work.  I've tried many photos and settings but I always get what looks like random text.  Do you know what I might be doing wrong?

[TPReal]

Hmm, try to change color mapping so that the line is more steep, it improves contrast. Look at the histograms to decide where the line should lie. You could also play with the color sliders but even I do not understand fully how they affect the resulting image
If you still think something does not work like it should, you can send me this image, or post it here, and I'll try to do something with it.
TPR.

[somps]

I try to run it in Vista and I get an error that says it can't find vcl100.bpl.

[TPReal]

Hello. Did you download the libraries I give link to in the first post? Put them in the program's directory or in windows\system or however it is called on vista.

[jeremejazz]

It's nice.. haha... I like this program.. So it's written in C Language? did u make this?...

[anniearsenal]

it isnt working :|

[jeremejazz]

;Doh .. it seems that you just made some error aniearsenal..
Is the program not running?.. you need to extract the library files to where youput the application

[assk7]

Hi,

I am looking for the reverse one - from text to image converter.
When I look the email source that has image - it shows as in text format in source view.
I can edit that text and want to convert that edited text to image format - just want to edit the original image .
Is there any program exists ?

Thanks.

[Nicolask3]

Greetings,

The application looks great and I wanted to try but couldn't find the Borlan runtime components
Where can I find them?

Thanks in advance

[chashnniel]

the download link is broken
what kind of dll files do i need to put into the prog folder?

[TPReal]

Sorry, I don't remember this now, I haven't used C++Builder in a very long time... But if you try running the program, it will tell you the first missing one, I think, maybe it can be found somewhere.