Best way to find an object in a picture
There is no "best method", it will vary according to application. There are many trains of thought regarding this subject.

I've done something in that area using Cepstral Analysis. Take a look at this:

https://8b14d84720d60d831e70ec440417feb774595227-www.googledrive.com/host/0B4-fFSwiy1mGdS00SHB2Nlo3bkU/imreg_translation/imreg_translation.html

Note: I am the author of the above.

Basically, you do the following:


Sum the target image and the object
Calculate the Cepstrum of said sum.
Find the peaks (there will be 2, you have to resolve the ambiguity using something like SAD)
The location of the peak will tell you the translation you must apply to the image.


I based it off this article: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=6128658&amp;tag=1

I'm actually in the middle of creating a barcode (1D and 2D) open-source program using this kind of processing. The link to my bitbucket acount is here: https://bitbucket.org/DSevero/

Although the repo is private for now, I should be releasing a first version around January

:)