# Install leptonica with Homebrew

Image processing and image analysis library. Version 1.87.0 via Homebrew; verified from local package data.

## Install

```sh
sudo av install brew:leptonica
```

Additional install commands:

### macOS

- Homebrew (100%):

```sh
brew install leptonica
```

  Evidence: provider-native install command

## Package facts

- **Package key:** brew:leptonica
- **Package manager:** Homebrew
- **Version:** 1.87.0
- **Source summary:** Image processing and image analysis library
- **Homepage:** <http://www.leptonica.org/>
- **Repository:** <https://github.com/DanBloomberg/leptonica>
- **Generated:** 2026-08-03T00:40:33+00:00

## Executables

- convertfilestopdf (alias)
- convertfilestops (alias)
- convertformat (alias)
- convertsegfilestopdf (alias)
- convertsegfilestops (alias)
- converttopdf (alias)
- converttops (alias)
- fileinfo (alias)
- imagetops (alias)
- xtractprotos (alias)

## Install behavior

- Bottle: not available

## Freshness

- Page generated: 2026-08-03
- Package-manager version: 1.87.0
## Project history and usage

Leptonica is Dan Bloomberg's open source C library for image processing and image analysis, with especially deep coverage of document-image operations used by OCR and page-processing tools.

### Project history

Leptonica's official README metadata dates the work to 2001 and describes it as an open source C library for efficient image processing and image analysis. The project site emphasizes a pedagogical style: the code is accompanied by web pages explaining algorithms and design methods.

The library grew into a broad C toolkit covering raster operations, affine and projective transforms, morphology, convolution, connected components, image format I/O, PDF and PostScript generation, document cleanup, skew detection, dewarping, barcode experiments, and many supporting data structures.

### Adoption history

Leptonica became important infrastructure below OCR and document-image projects. Its README lists Tesseract OCR, OpenCV, and jbig2enc among open source projects that use it.

The project's packaging history reflects a classic C-library role: distributions ship the library, headers, command-line utilities, and example programs so higher-level tools can depend on a stable native image-processing base.

### How it is used

Developers link against liblept and use the pix-centered API for reading, transforming, analyzing, and writing images. The package also includes command-line programs such as file conversion and PDF/PostScript helpers that expose common library workflows.

### Why package nerds care

Leptonica is significant because it is one of those quiet dependency packages that makes OCR stacks work. It is small enough to feel like a C utility library, but large enough to cover thousands of image-processing functions and the boring portability details that downstream packages need.

### Timeline

- 2001: Official metadata identifies Leptonica as an open source C library for image processing and image analysis.
- 2010s: Leptonica moved into GitHub-based maintenance, with contributors preserving old distributions and modernizing build support.
- 2024: Version 1.85.0 added PDF rendering support and many maintenance fixes.
- 2025: Version 1.87.0 was distributed on December 24, 2025.

### Related projects

- Tesseract OCR is a major downstream user.
- OpenCV and jbig2enc are listed by Leptonica as open source projects using the library.

### Sources

- <https://github.com/DanBloomberg/leptonica>
- <https://www.leptonica.org/>
- <https://www.leptonica.org/source/README.html>
- <https://www.leptonica.org/source/version-notes.html>


## Security Notes

broad file, network, media, or database tool signal.

- **Geiger risk:** blue / medium
- broad file, network, media, or database tool signal


## Combined YAML source

View the package source record on GitHub. [combined/leptonica.yml](https://github.com/automic-vault/db/blob/main/combined/leptonica.yml)


## Sources

- Nucleus package database
- Geiger risk classifier
- curated package history
- pkgdb category and tag curation