CONCEPT OF COLOR AND

COLOR COMPOSITES

Dr. Prashanth J
Civil Engineering Department
NIT Silchar
 COLOR FUNDAMENTALS

➢ In eyes, cones are responsible for

color perception.

➢ Of the 6-7 million cones of human

eye:
65% are sensitive to red light
33% to green light
2% to blue light

➢ These form the primary colors

Figure : Spectral response curves for each cone type.
The peaks for each curve are at 440nm (blue),
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545nm (green) and 580nm (red).
 COLOR FUNDAMENTALS

• Colors are distinguished from one another using the characteristics of hue, saturation and brightness.
• Hue refers to the dominant wavelength in a mixture of light waves and hence it stands for the dominant
color as perceived by an observed. When we see an object as blue or yellow, we are actually referring to
the hue of the object.
• Saturation stands for the amount of white light mixed with hue.
• Together, hue and saturation can be termed as chromaticity.
• Brightness refers to the overall lightness or darkness of the image.
• If X, Y and Z be the amount/intensity of red, green and blue colors needed to generate any color, then a
color can be specified by the following terms:

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 COLOR FUNDAMENTALS…

➢ Primary Additive Colors

: Red, Green and Blue (RGB)

➢ Complementary Colors
: Cyan, Magenta and Yellow

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 COLOR FUNDAMENTALS- NATURAL
COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY

➢ If three primary colors are superimposed in unequal amounts, then number of colors are
produced.
➢If three primary colors are superimposed in equal amounts, then greys ranging from black
to white are produced.
➢If white light is passed through a color filter, it is possible to subtract one of the primary
colors.

Additive process Subtractive process

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 COLOR SPACE

• A color space/color system specifies a coordinate system within which each

color can be represented by a single point.
• The most commonly used models are the RGB (red, green, blue), CMY
(cyan, magenta, yellow), CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black), IHS
(intensity, hue, saturation).
• The RGB models are usually used in video cameras, CMYK models for
color printing and IHS models resemble with the way humans interpret color.

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COLOR SPACE - RGB

➢ Primary colors of red, green and

blue are used within a cartesian
coordinate system

➢ A unit cube is shown with the

underlying assumption that all
colors are normalized.

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COLOR SPACE - CMY

➢Cyan (C), Magenta (M) and Yellow (Y)

comprise the secondary colors of light.

➢This color space is generally used to

generate hardcopy output.

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 COLOR SPACE - CMYK

• Practically, a combination of cyan, magenta and yellow produces a faint muddy

black color when it should theoretically produce pure black color.
• Hence, in order to produce pure black color, a fourth color, black is added which
results in CMYK color model.
• A four color printing means CMY color model along with black color.

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COLOR SPACE-IHS

➢ Humans define color in terms of

its intensity (I), hue (H) and
saturation (S).

➢ Intensity: Variations in brightness

➢Hue: Dominant wavelength of

color

➢Saturation: Purity of color

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 COLOR COMPOSITES

True Colour Composite (TCC)

➢Red band – Red; Green band – Green; Blue band – Blue

False Colour Composite (FCC)

➢Any other combination of colours
➢E.g., Blue band – Red; Red band – Green; Green band – Blue
➢ E.g., Blue band – Red; Red band – Green; NIR band – Blue

Standard False Colour Composite (FCC)

➢ E.g., NIR band – Red; Red band – Green; Green band – Blue
➢ In IRS: Band 4 – Red; Band 3 – Green; Band 2 – Blue
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 TRUE COLOR COMPOSITE

• If a multispectral image consists of the three visual

primary colour bands (red, green, blue), the three
bands may be combined to produce a "true colour"
image.
• For example, the bands 3 (red band), 2 (green band)
and 1 (blue band) of a LANDSAT TM image or an
IKONOS multispectral image can be assigned
respectively to the R, G, and B colours for display.
• In this way, the colours of the resulting colour
composite image resemble closely what would be
observed by the human eyes.

A 1-m resolution true-colour IKONOS image 12

 FALSE COLOR COMPOSITE

• The display colour assignment for any band of a multispectral image can be done in an
entirely arbitrary manner.
• In this case, the colour of a target in the displayed image does not have any
resemblance to its actual colour.
• The resulting product is known as a false colour composite image.
• There are many possible schemes of producing false colour composite images.
• However, some scheme may be more suitable for detecting certain objects in the
image.

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 FCC – EXAMPLE

R = XS3 (NIR band)

G = XS2 (red band)
B = XS1 (green band)

False colour composite multispectral SPOT image: Red: XS3;

Green: XS2; Blue: XS1
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 False color composite of a SPOT 4 multispectral image

Red: SWIR band; Green: NIR band; Blue: Red band. Red: NIR band; Green: Red band; Blue: Green band.
In this display scheme, vegetation appears in shades of green. Vegetation appears in shades of red. The smoke plume
Bare soils and clear-cut areas appear purplish or magenta. The appears bright bluish white.
patch of bright red area on the left is the location of active
fires. A smoke plume originating from the active fire site
appears faint bluish in color.
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 NATURAL COLOR COMPOSITE

• For optical images lacking one or more of the three visual primary color bands (i.e.
red, green and blue), the spectral bands (some of which may not be in the visible
region) may be combined in such a way that the appearance of the displayed image
resembles a visible color photograph, i.e. vegetation in green, water in blue, soil in
brown or grey, etc.
• Many people refer to this composite as a "true color" composite. However, this term
is misleading since in many instances the colors are only simulated to look similar to
the "true" colors of the targets. The term "natural color" is preferred.

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 NCC - EXAMPLE

• The SPOT HRV multispectral sensor does not have

a blue band. The three bands, XS1, XS2 and XS3
correspond to the green, red, and NIR bands
respectively. But a reasonably good natural colour
composite can be produced by the following
combination of the spectral bands:
• R = XS2
• G = (3 XS1 + XS3)/4
• B = (3 XS1 - XS3)/4 Natural colour composite multispectral SPOT image:
Red: XS2;
• where R, G and B are the display colour channels.
Green: 0.75 XS2 + 0.25 XS3;
Blue: 0.75 XS2 - 0.25 XS3 17
 Crater Lake National Park in southwestern Oregon

http://gis.humboldt.edu/OLM/Courses/GSP_216/le
ssons/composites.html

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 OPTIMUM INDEX FACTOR

➢When satellites like Thematic Mapper (TM) are capable of

generating more than one color composite, OIF enables to select
the best combination.

➢OIF is given by the expression:

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S
K =1
K
OIF = 3

 Abs ( R
J =1
J )
Where SK denotes the standard deviation for band K and RJ denotes the absolute value
of the correlation coefficient between any two of the three bands which are being
evaluated.

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Thank You

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