Python script for OCR using Tesseract

OSD.py

# Uses Tesseract (tesserocr) to recognize files
#   in a directory. I use this as follows:
#
#   1. split the PDF into JPG images in a directory
#        called "IMAGES" (e.g., pdftoppm -jpeg input.pdf IMAGES/output)
#   2. run this script (python OSD.py), which will
#        produce a text file for each image in "IMAGES".
#   3. concatenate the text files with tail
#   4. if desired, 

# Note that I have explicitly set the language to "kan" 
#   (Kannada), because this gives better results than 
#   having Tesseract "guess." 

import glob
import io
import os
from PIL import Image
from tesserocr import PyTessBaseAPI

image_list = [] 

for filename in glob.glob("IMAGES/*.jpg"):
    image_list.append(filename)

with PyTessBaseAPI(lang="kan") as api:
    for img in sorted(image_list):
        output = os.path.splitext(img)[0] + ".txt"
        api.SetImageFile(img)
        with io.open(output, "a", encoding="utf8") as f:
            f.write(api.GetUTF8Text())