How to Install OpenCV (cv2) on PyCharm?

OpenCV is a framework for image processing and image recognition—among other things. It’s a super powerful tool in your data science and machine learning toolbelt! But how to install it in your PyCharm environment? This article will show you how!

Problem Formulation: Given a PyCharm project. How to install the OpenCV library in your project within a virtual environment or globally?

Here’s a solution that always works:

• Open File > Settings > Project from the PyCharm menu.
• Select your current project.
• Click the Python Interpreter tab within your project tab.
• Click the small + symbol to add a new library to the project.
• Now type in the library to be installed, in your example "opencv-python" without quotes, and click Install Package.
• Wait for the installation to terminate and close all popup windows.

Here’s the installation process as a short animated video—it works analogously for OpenCV, just type in “opencv-python” in the search field instead:

Make sure to type in “opencv-python” because there are many other packages that are not required but also contain the term “opencv” (False Positives):

You can check out part 1 of our OpenCV tutorial here:

For parts 2-5 of the “Introduction to OpenCV Course”, please refer to the Finxter Computer Science Academy! ?

Feel free to check out the following free email academy with Python cheat sheets to boost your coding skills!

To become a PyCharm master, check out our full course on the Finxter Computer Science Academy available for free for all Finxter Premium Members:

Programming Humor

💡 Programming is 10% science, 20% ingenuity, and 70% getting the ingenuity to work with the science.

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• Question: Why do Java programmers wear glasses?
• Answer: Because they cannot C# …!

Feel free to check out our blog article with more coding jokes. 😉

Chris

While working as a researcher in distributed systems, Dr. Christian Mayer found his love for teaching computer science students.

To help students reach higher levels of Python success, he founded the programming education website Finxter.com that has taught exponential skills to millions of coders worldwide. He’s the author of the best-selling programming books Python One-Liners (NoStarch 2020), The Art of Clean Code (NoStarch 2022), and The Book of Dash (NoStarch 2022). Chris also coauthored the Coffee Break Python series of self-published books. He’s a computer science enthusiast, freelancer, and owner of one of the top 10 largest Python blogs worldwide.

His passions are writing, reading, and coding. But his greatest passion is to serve aspiring coders through Finxter and help them to boost their skills. You can join his free email academy here.