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ibm-watsonvisual-recognition

Watson Visual Recognition API


I am trying to use the Watson Visual Recognition API as an OCR component, however while it is doing a good job on the computerized text, I want to expand it more to recognize "Nicely-handwritten" text.

Is it possible to use the custom classifiers to train the API? and if yes and someone did try it already, is it effective?


Solution

  • As mentioned, the text recognition part of Watson Visual Recognition cannot be trained by users.

    The custom classifier learning functions cannot be used effectively for text recognition. They are designed for classifying a wide array of photographic-style images of scenes, activities, objects, animal types, etc. Text reco is a pretty different problem. In some limited situations, you could train a classifier to do text-related tasks, like to tell the difference between signs (such as Yield vs. Stop) or icons (like logos) for example but it would not be "reading" the text - it would be discriminating based on the overall appearance of the image - including color, shapes, textures, etc.