How to Read from System.Drawing Objects

Chaknith related to How to Read from System.Drawing Objects
Chaknith Bin
October 24, 2023
Updated January 8, 2025
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System.Drawing.Bitmap is a class in the .NET Framework used for working with bitmap images. It provides methods and properties to create, manipulate, and display bitmap images.

System.Drawing.Image is a base class for all GDI+ image objects in the .NET Framework. It is the parent class for various image types, including System.Drawing.Bitmap.

IronSoftware.Drawing.AnyBitmap is a bitmap class in IronDrawing, an open-source library originally developed by Iron Software. It helps C# software engineers replace System.Drawing.Common in .NET projects on Windows, macOS, and Linux platforms.

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First Step:
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Read System.Drawing.Bitmap Example

First, instantiate the IronTesseract class to perform OCR. Create a System.Drawing.Bitmap from one of the various methods. In the code example, I've decided to use a file path.

Next, use the 'using' statement to create the OcrImageInput object, passing the image from the System.Drawing.Bitmap object to it. Finally, use the Read method to perform OCR.

:path=/static-assets/ocr/content-code-examples/how-to/input-system-drawing-read-bitmap.cs
using IronOcr;
using System.Drawing;

// Instantiate IronTesseract
IronTesseract ocrTesseract = new IronTesseract();

// Read image file to Bitmap
Bitmap bitmap = new Bitmap("Potter.tiff");

// Import System.Drawing.Bitmap
using var imageInput = new OcrImageInput(bitmap);
// Perform OCR
OcrResult ocrResult = ocrTesseract.Read(imageInput);

Read System.Drawing.Image Example

Reading from a System.Drawing.Image is as simple as creating the OcrImageInput object with the Image and then performing the standard OCR process using the Read method.

:path=/static-assets/ocr/content-code-examples/how-to/input-system-drawing-read-image.cs
using IronOcr;
using Image = System.Drawing.Image;

// Instantiate IronTesseract
IronTesseract ocrTesseract = new IronTesseract();

// Open image file as Image
Image image = Image.FromFile("Potter.tiff");

// Import System.Drawing.Image
using var imageInput = new OcrImageInput(image);
// Perform OCR
OcrResult ocrResult = ocrTesseract.Read(imageInput);

Read IronSoftware.Drawing.AnyBitmap Example

Similarly, after creating or obtaining an AnyBitmap object, you can construct the OcrImageInput class. The constructor will take care of all the necessary steps to import the data. The code example below demonstrates this.

:path=/static-assets/ocr/content-code-examples/how-to/input-system-drawing-read-anybitmap.cs
using IronOcr;
using IronSoftware.Drawing;

// Instantiate IronTesseract
IronTesseract ocrTesseract = new IronTesseract();

// Open image file as AnyBitmap
AnyBitmap anyBitmap = AnyBitmap.FromFile("Potter.tiff");

// Import IronSoftware.Drawing.AnyBitmap
using var imageInput = new OcrImageInput(anyBitmap);
// Perform OCR
OcrResult ocrResult = ocrTesseract.Read(imageInput);

Specify Scan Region

In the construction of the OcrImageInput class, you can specify the area to scan. This allows you to define the specific region of the image document for OCR. Depending on the image document, specifying the scanning region can significantly enhance performance. In the provided code example, I specify that only the chapter number and title should be extracted.

:path=/static-assets/ocr/content-code-examples/how-to/input-images-read-specific-region.cs
using IronOcr;
using IronSoftware.Drawing;
using System;

// Instantiate IronTesseract
IronTesseract ocrTesseract = new IronTesseract();

// Specify crop region
Rectangle scanRegion = new Rectangle(800, 200, 900, 400);

// Add image
using var imageInput = new OcrImageInput("Potter.tiff", ContentArea: scanRegion);
// Perform OCR
OcrResult ocrResult = ocrTesseract.Read(imageInput);

// Output the result to console
Console.WriteLine(ocrResult.Text);

OCR Result

Read specific region
Chaknith related to OCR Result
Software Engineer
Chaknith is the Sherlock Holmes of developers. It first occurred to him he might have a future in software engineering, when he was doing code challenges for fun. His focus is on IronXL and IronBarcode, but he takes pride in helping customers with every product. Chaknith leverages his knowledge from talking directly with customers, to help further improve the products themselves. His anecdotal feedback goes beyond Jira tickets and supports product development, documentation and marketing, to improve customer’s overall experience.When he isn’t in the office, he can be found learning about machine learning, coding and hiking.