install opencv into a virtual environment

Question

I need to use opencv in a project that is in a virtual environment, but you cannot install opencv with pip.

installing on my local machine (OSX Yosemite, version 10.10.1) with homebrew works just fine, but I cannot do "brew install" in my virtualenv.

How can I include opencv in my environment?

Answer 1

As described here (see Option B) you can run this from inside your virtual environment:

pip install opencv-contrib-python

As mentioned at that link, opencv-contrib-python is an unofficial pre-built OpenCV package.

I tested this on Linux.

Answer 2

I use Windows 10. In my case, in order to use openCV in my new virtual environment, I manually copied all of the files regarding openCV which are in C:\Program Files (x86)\python36\Lib\site-packages to virtual environment directory C:\Program Files (x86)\ibrahim\Lib\site-packages. Then, import cv2 to python and it worked for me. Be noted that you need to copy all of the files inside red boxes that I showed below.