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OpenCV VS Apple Core ML

Compare OpenCV VS Apple Core ML and see what are their differences

OpenCV logo OpenCV

OpenCV is the world's biggest computer vision library

Apple Core ML logo Apple Core ML

Integrate a broad variety of ML model types into your app
  • OpenCV Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-29
  • Apple Core ML Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-13

OpenCV features and specs

  • Comprehensive Library
    OpenCV offers a wide range of tools for various aspects of computer vision, including image processing, machine learning, and video analysis.
  • Cross-Platform Compatibility
    OpenCV is designed to run on multiple platforms, including Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, and iOS, which makes it versatile for development across different environments.
  • Open Source
    Being open-source, OpenCV is freely available for use and allows developers to inspect, modify, and enhance the code according to their needs.
  • Large Community Support
    A large community of developers and researchers actively contributes to OpenCV, providing extensive support, tutorials, forums, and continuously updated documentation.
  • Real-Time Performance
    OpenCV is highly optimized for real-time applications, making it suitable for performance-critical tasks in various industries such as robotics and interactive installations.
  • Extensive Integration
    OpenCV can easily be integrated with other libraries and frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, and OpenCL, enhancing its capabilities in deep learning and GPU acceleration.
  • Rich Collection of examples
    OpenCV provides a large number of example codes and sample applications, which can significantly reduce the learning curve for beginners.

Possible disadvantages of OpenCV

  • Steep Learning Curve
    Due to the vast array of functionalities and the complexity of some of its advanced features, beginners may find it challenging to learn and use effectively.
  • Documentation Gaps
    While the documentation is extensive, it can sometimes be incomplete or outdated, requiring users to rely on community forums or external sources for solutions.
  • Resource Intensive
    Some functions and algorithms in OpenCV can be quite resource-intensive, requiring significant processing power and memory, which can be a limitation for low-end devices.
  • Limited High-Level Abstractions
    OpenCV provides a wealth of low-level functions, but it may lack higher-level abstractions and frameworks, necessitating more hands-on coding and algorithm development.
  • Dependency Management
    Setting up and managing dependencies can be cumbersome, especially when integrating OpenCV with other libraries or on certain operating systems.
  • Backward Compatibility Issues
    With frequent updates and new versions, backward compatibility can sometimes be problematic, potentially breaking existing code when updating.

Apple Core ML features and specs

  • Integration with Apple Ecosystem
    Core ML is tightly integrated with Apple's hardware and software environments, providing seamless performance and ensuring that models work well across iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS devices.
  • Performance Optimization
    Core ML is optimized for on-device performance, leveraging the capabilities of Apple’s processors to deliver fast and efficient machine learning tasks without significant battery drain or latency.
  • Privacy
    With on-device processing, Core ML allows for data privacy as it minimizes the need for sending user data to external servers, which aligns with Apple's strong privacy principles.
  • Ease of Use
    Developers can easily integrate machine learning models into their applications using Core ML, thanks to its extensive support for various model types and the availability of conversion tools from popular ML frameworks.
  • Continuous Updates
    Apple regularly updates Core ML to include the latest advancements and optimizations in machine learning, ensuring developers have access to cutting-edge tools.

Possible disadvantages of Apple Core ML

  • Platform Limitation
    Core ML is designed specifically for Apple devices, which limits its use to only Apple's ecosystem and may not be suitable for applications targeting multiple platforms.
  • Model Size Restrictions
    There are limitations on the size of models that can be deployed on-device, which can be a hindrance for applications requiring large and complex models.
  • Learning Curve
    For developers who are new to iOS or macOS development, there might be a learning curve to effectively integrate and utilize Core ML features within their applications.
  • Limited Framework Support
    While Core ML supports popular machine learning frameworks, not all frameworks and their full functionalities are supported, which can be restrictive for developers using niche or emerging frameworks.
  • Hardware Dependency
    The performance and capabilities of machine learning models in Core ML heavily depend on the specific hardware of the Apple device being used, which can lead to inconsistent performance across different devices.

OpenCV videos

AI Courses by OpenCV.org

More videos:

  • Review - Practical Python and OpenCV

Apple Core ML videos

IBM Watson & Apple Core ML Collaboration - What it means for app development

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to OpenCV and Apple Core ML)
Data Science And Machine Learning
Developer Tools
0 0%
100% 100
Data Science Tools
100 100%
0% 0
AI
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare OpenCV and Apple Core ML

OpenCV Reviews

7 Best Computer Vision Development Libraries in 2024
From the widespread adoption of OpenCV with its extensive algorithmic support to TensorFlow's role in machine learning-driven applications, these libraries play a vital role in real-world applications such as object detection, facial recognition, and image segmentation.
10 Python Libraries for Computer Vision
OpenCV is the go-to library for computer vision tasks. It boasts a vast collection of algorithms and functions that facilitate tasks such as image and video processing, feature extraction, object detection, and more. Its simple interface, extensive documentation, and compatibility with various platforms make it a preferred choice for both beginners and experts in the field.
Source: clouddevs.com
Top 8 Alternatives to OpenCV for Computer Vision and Image Processing
OpenCV is an open-source computer vision and machine learning software library that was first released in 2000. It was initially developed by Intel, and now it is maintained by the OpenCV Foundation. OpenCV provides a set of tools and software development kits (SDKs) that help developers create computer vision applications. It is written in C++, but it supports several...
Source: www.uubyte.com
Top 8 Image-Processing Python Libraries Used in Machine Learning
These are some of the most basic operations that can be performed with the OpenCV on an image. Apart from this, OpenCV can perform operations such as Image Segmentation, Face Detection, Object Detection, 3-D reconstruction, feature extraction as well.
Source: neptune.ai
5 Ultimate Python Libraries for Image Processing
Pillow is an image processing library for Python derived from the PIL or the Python Imaging Library. Although it is not as powerful and fast as openCV it can be used for simple image manipulation works like cropping, resizing, rotating and greyscaling the image. Another benefit is that it can be used without NumPy and Matplotlib.

Apple Core ML Reviews

We have no reviews of Apple Core ML yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, OpenCV should be more popular than Apple Core ML. It has been mentiond 60 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

OpenCV mentions (60)

  • Grasping Computer Vision Fundamentals Using Python
    To aspiring innovators: Dive into open-source frameworks like OpenCV or PyTorch, experiment with custom object detection models, or contribute to projects tackling bias mitigation in training datasets. Computer vision isn’t just a tool, it’s a bridge between the physical and digital worlds, inviting collaborative solutions to global challenges. The next frontier? Systems that don’t just interpret visuals, but... - Source: dev.to / 5 days ago
  • Top Programming Languages for AI Development in 2025
    Ideal For: Computer vision, NLP, deep learning, and machine learning. - Source: dev.to / 18 days ago
  • Why 2024 Was the Best Year for Visual AI (So Far)
    Almost everyone has heard of libraries like OpenCV, Pytorch, and Torchvision. But there have been incredible leaps and bounds in other libraries to help support new tasks that have helped push research even further. It would be impossible to thank each and every project and the thousands of contributors who have helped make the entire community better. MedSAM2 has been helping bring the awesomeness of SAM2 to the... - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • 20 Open Source Tools I Recommend to Build, Share, and Run AI Projects
    OpenCV is an open-source computer vision and machine learning software library that allows users to perform various ML tasks, from processing images and videos to identifying objects, faces, or handwriting. Besides object detection, this platform can also be used for complex computer vision tasks like Geometry-based monocular or stereo computer vision. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • F1 FollowLine + HSV filter + PID Controller
    This library is used for image and video processing, offering functions for tasks like object detection, filtering, and transformations in computer vision. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
View more

Apple Core ML mentions (7)

  • Ask HN: Where is Apple? They seem to be left out of the AI race?
    On the machine learning side of AI, they have CoreML. You can drag-and-drop images into Xcode to train an image classifier. And run the models on device, so if solar flares destroy the cell phone network and terrorists bomb all the data centers, your phone could still tell you if it's a hot dog or not. https://developer.apple.com/machine-learning/ https://developer.apple.com/machine-learning/core-ml/... - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • The Magnitude of the AI Bubble
    Apple has actually created ML chipsets, so AI can be executed natively, on-device. https://developer.apple.com/machine-learning/. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Does anyone else suspect that the official iOS ChatGPT app might be conducting some local inference / edge-computing? [Discussion]
    For your reference, Apple's pages for Machine Learning for Developers and for their research. The Apple Neural Engine was custom designed to work better with their proprietary machine learning programs -- and they've been opening up access to developers by extending support / compatibility for TensorFlow and PyTorch. They've also got CoreML, CreateML, and various APIs they are making to allow more use of their... Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Apple to occupy 90% of TSMC 3nm capacity in 2023
    > It’d be one thing if Apple actually worked on AI softwares a bit and made it readily available to developers. * Apple Silicon CPUs have a Neural Engine specifically made for fast ML-inference * Apple supports PyTorch (https://developer.apple.com/metal/pytorch/) * Apple has its own easily accessible machine-learning framework called Core-ML (https://developer.apple.com/machine-learning/) So it would be inaccurate... - Source: Hacker News / about 2 years ago
  • The iPhone 13 is a pitch-perfect iPhone 12S
    This is the developer documentation where they advertise the APIs - https://developer.apple.com/machine-learning/. Source: over 3 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing OpenCV and Apple Core ML, you can also consider the following products

Scikit-learn - scikit-learn (formerly scikits.learn) is an open source machine learning library for the Python programming language.

Amazon Machine Learning - Machine learning made easy for developers of any skill level

Pandas - Pandas is an open source library providing high-performance, easy-to-use data structures and data analysis tools for the Python.

TensorFlow Lite - Low-latency inference of on-device ML models

NumPy - NumPy is the fundamental package for scientific computing with Python

Roboflow Universe - You no longer need to collect and label images or train a ML model to add computer vision to your project.