Installing OpenCV 3.2.0 for Python 3.5.2 on Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS

By Billal BEGUERADJ | | 3 minutes

You will learn how to install OpenCV 3.2.0 on Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS to work with Python 3.5.2.

Introduction

I just freshly finished the installation of Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS on my new laptop, so I had to install the programming environments I need. As I am passionate of image processing and computer vision, I needed to re-install the latest version of OpenCV (3.2.0) to be able to use it with Python 3.5.2

The best way to work with Python libraries on a Linux platform is by relying on Python virtual environments which saves headaches caused by versions dependencies. This is why I suppose you have already installed virtualenv.

Nota bene

Do not even give a try to install the wrapper package for OpenCV python bindings:

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pip install opencv-python

The reason is that this easy way of doing things will lead you to install a package which is not enough mature as you can not even deal with videos and can not even display an image using cv2.imshow() function. So do not be lazy and follow the below steps.

Installation steps

I am sharing with you what worked for me on my machine (64 bits):

  • Download OpenCV 3.2.0:
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wget -O 3.2.0.zip https://github.com/Itseez/opencv/archive/3.2.0.zip
unzip 3.2.0.zip
  • Download SIFT and SURF OpenCV 3.2.0 implementations:
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wget -O opencv_contrib.zip https://github.com/Itseez/opencv_contrib/archive/3.2.0.zip
unzip opencv_contrib.zip
  • Install the all the packages needed to compile a debian package:
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sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake pkg-config
  • Install the libraries needed to process different video and images formats:
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sudo apt-get install libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libswscale-dev libv4l-dev
sudo apt-get install libxvidcore-dev libx264-dev libgtk-3-dev
sudo apt-get install libjpeg8-dev libtiff5-dev libjasper-dev libpng12-dev
  • Install computation libraries:
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sudo apt-get install libatlas-base-dev numpy gfortran
  • Install Python 3.5 development libraries:
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sudo apt-get install python3.5-dev
  • Create a virtual environment where to install OpenCV 3.2.0:
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virtualenv cv
cd cv
source bin/activate
  • Setting OpenCV 3.2.0 (this takes time, be patient):
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cd ~/3.2.0/
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RELEASE \
    -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local \
    -D INSTALL_PYTHON_EXAMPLES=ON \
    -D INSTALL_C_EXAMPLES=OFF \
    -D OPENCV_EXTRA_MODULES_PATH=~/opencv_contrib-3.1.0/modules \
    -D PYTHON_EXECUTABLE=~/.virtualenvs/cv/bin/python \
    -D BUILD_EXAMPLES=ON ..
  • Compiling and installing OpenCV 3.2.0:
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make -j4
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig
  • Rename cv2.cpython-35m-x86_64-linux-gnu.so to cv2.so
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sudo mv /usr/local/lib/python3.5/site-packages/cv2.cpython-35m-x86_64-linux-gnu.so /usr/local/lib/python3.5/site-packages/cv2.so
  • Simlinking OpenCV3.2.0 to the cv virtual environment:
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cd ~/.virtualenvs/cv/lib/python3.5/site-packages/
ln -s /usr/local/lib/python3.5/site-packages/cv2.so cv2.so

These previous steps lead me to what I wanted to get:

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(cv) begueradj@h4ck-B1ll:~$ python
Python 3.5.2 (default, Nov 17 2016, 17:05:23) 
[GCC 5.4.0 20160609] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import cv2
>>> cv2.__version__
'3.2.0'
>>>