Need help with OCR and image program

[maxxn88]

hey guys, i appreciate the help in advance,  I am VERY new to labVIEW, and I'm having troubles trying to figure out some very simple things.  I am using the Vision Assistant block to do some basic OCR to an image.  Only issue, i can't figure out how to open a picture to analyze?! i know this is probably a very dumb question, but i honestly have been trying to figure out how to do this for a while, and i'm getting nowhere.  Can someone give me a hand?  At this point, i just want to open the picture, run OCR on it, and display the picture, and the string of results.  I just can't figure out how to load the image to go to the "image in" port on the block.  I have attached what i've done so far.  Eventually, i will need to be connecting some sort of camera, and i will also need to integrate geometric shape recognition, and color recognition.  But, gotta start somewhere.  Any help is greatly appreciated!

[Richard_M]

Have a look at some of the examples, under Toolkits and modules, Vision. There's examples that open files then do stuff on them. Theres even an OCR example.

[Michelle_N]

Try this:

http://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-2126

Then, pass the purple Image refernce wire into the Vision Assistant express VI.

[maxxn88]

Thank you for your help.  I have gotten the program to load a picture, and then got the ROI set up for OCR.  Only issue is, when I load the picture, it turns it into an 8-bit, grayscale image.  This isn't good for me because i also need to do color analysis.  I changed the IMAQ block to RGB (U32) Image type, but it still comes out as a greyscale photo.  How do i get it as color so that i can run it through the vision assistant, to get image color info?

[Michelle_N]

Try that.

[maxxn88]

Michelle,

Thank you for your help, and this may sound dumb, but where do I find that "RBG U32" block to connect to the "Image Type" pin of the IMAQ? (i'm sorry i'm so new, but gotta start somewhere right? haha)

Thanks again!