python - How do I find an image contained within an image?

Question

I'm currently building what basically amounts to a cross between a search engine and a gallery for web comics that's focused on citing sources and giving authors credit.

I'm trying to figure out a way to search an image to find characters within it.

For example:

Assuming I have the red character and the green character saved as Red Man and Green Man how do I determine if an image contains one or the other.

This doesn't need to have 100% recognition or anything is this is more of an added feature I'd like to create, I'm just not sure where to start. I've done a lot of googling for image recognition but haven't found much helpful.

For what it's worth, I'd prefer to do this using Python.

Answer 1

For anyone who stumbles across this in the future.

This can be done with template matching. To summarize (my understanding), template matching looks for an exact match of one image within another image.

Here's an example of how to do it within Python:

import cv2

method = cv2.TM_SQDIFF_NORMED

# Read the images from the file
small_image = cv2.imread('small_image.png')
large_image = cv2.imread('large_image.jpeg')

result = cv2.matchTemplate(small_image, large_image, method)

# We want the minimum squared difference
mn,_,mnLoc,_ = cv2.minMaxLoc(result)

# Draw the rectangle:
# Extract the coordinates of our best match
MPx,MPy = mnLoc

# Step 2: Get the size of the template. This is the same size as the match.
trows,tcols = small_image.shape[:2]

# Step 3: Draw the rectangle on large_image
cv2.rectangle(large_image, (MPx,MPy),(MPx+tcols,MPy+trows),(0,0,255),2)

# Display the original image with the rectangle around the match.
cv2.imshow('output',large_image)

# The image is only displayed if we call this
cv2.waitKey(0)