In this series, I’ll build a License Plate Recognition (LPR) engine step by step in C++. The goal is not only to recognize license plates but also to understand the internal mechanics behind image processing and recognition systems. In this first part we will: Load an image using OpenCV Convert the image into grayscale Introduce the core data structures used by the recognition engine Future parts will cover: Image preprocessing Noise reduction Edge detection Plate localization Character segmentation Character recognition Performance optimization Loading an image The first step of any vision system is acquiring image data. We read the image path from command-line arguments: #include <iostream> #include "opencv2/opencv.hpp" #include "RecogEngine.h" int main ( int argc , char * argv []) { if ( argc < 2 ) { std :: cout << "Usage: app.exe <image_path> \n " ; return - 1 ; } const char * imagePath = argv [ 1 ]; cv :: Mat image = cv :: imread ( imagePath ); if ( image .…