What software to use for image analysis?

Question

Algorithms

Hello everyone) Need a program for image analysis. So that different algorithms, effects, and so on can be applied to it.
Photoshop is not suitable - there are too few opportunities for algorithmic analysis. I tried Matlab, but it was painfully difficult and not clear.
Is there something simple, preferably for Mac?
PS The task itself - How to solve such a captcha? You need to write an algorithm for preprocessing, segmentation, etc. for recognition.

Answer 1

If matlab is "painfully difficult", then there are no options.

Answer 2

Well, simple, I'm afraid not. There are wonderful libraries in python - scikit-image.org and as the basis of scipy.org with NumPy to boot.
Here to read - scipy-lectures.github.io/advanced/image_processing
They can quite easily cut off noise and whiten objects, but you will need to somehow recognize the characters.