Downloading and Installing OpenCV
The main OpenCV site is on SourceForge at http://SourceForge.net/projects/opencvlibrary and the OpenCV Wiki [OpenCV Wiki] page is at http://opencvlibrary.SourceForge.net. For Linux, the source distribution is the file opencv-1.0.0.tar.gz; for Windows, you want OpenCV_1.0.exe. However, the most up-to-date version is always on the CVS server at SourceForge.
Install
Once you download the libraries, you must install them. For detailed installation instructions on Linux or Mac OS, see the text file named INSTALL directly under the …/opencv/ directory; this file also describes how to build and run the OpenCV testing routines. INSTALL lists the additional programs you'll need in order to become an OpenCV developer, such as autoconf, automake, libtool, and swig.
Windows
Get the executable installation from SourceForge and run it. It will install OpenCV, register DirectShow filters, and perform various post-installation procedures. You are now ready to start using OpenCV. You can always go to the …/opencv/_make directory and open opencv.sln with MSVC++ or MSVC.NET 2005, or you can open opencv.dsw with lower versions of MSVC++ and build debug versions or rebuild release versions of the library.[5]
To add the commercial IPP performance optimizations to Windows, obtain and install IPP from the Intel site (http://www.intel.com/software/products/ipp/index.htm); use version 5.1 or later. Make sure the appropriate binary folder (e.g., c:/program files/intel/ipp/5.1/ia32/bin ...