Color Image Processing

• Color
– simplifies object extraction and identification
– human vision : thousands of colors vs max-24
bit gray levels

• Color Spectrum
– white light with a prism (1966, Newton)
• Visible light: a narrow band of
electromagnetic radiation
380nm (blue) − 780nm (red)
• Wavelength: Each physically
distinct colour corresponds to at
least one wavelength in this band.
• Pure Colours: Pure or
monochromatic colours do not
exist in nature.
• Spectrum: Intensity as
a function of
wavelength.
• The colour of an object:
is the product of the From http://fuse.pha.jhu.edu/~wpb/spectroscopy/basics.html

spectrum of the incident

light with the light
absorption and/or
reflection properties of
the object.
 Human colour perception
• The human eye does not perceive individual light
wavelengths.
• It contains three types of colour receptor (cones)
which integrate over parts of the spectrum:

From http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/BlueSky/blue_sky.html
• When processing colour images, the
following problems (amongst others) have
to be dealt with:
– The images are vectorial → 3 numbers are
associated with each pixel.
– The colours recorded by a camera are heavily
dependent on the lighting conditions.
 Lighting conditions
• The lighting conditions of the scene have a
large effect on the colours recorded.

Image taken lit by a Image taken lit by a

flash. tungsten lamp.
• The following four images of the same scene
were acquired under different lighting
conditions:
 Dealing with Lighting Changes
• Knowing just the RGB values is not enough
to know everything about the image.
– The R, G and B primaries used by different
devices are usually different.
• For scientific work, the camera and lighting
should be calibrated.
• For multimedia applications, this is more
difficult to organise:
– Algorithms exist for estimating the illumination
colour.
 Color Models

• RGB : Color Monitor, Color Camera, Color Scanner

• CMY : Color Printer, Color Copier
• YIQ : Color TV, Y(luminance), I(Inphase),
Q(quadrature)
– HSI, HSV
• RGB Model
• CMY Model
– Color Printer, Color Copier
– RGB data CMY
HSI model: hue and saturation
 HSI
• These spaces use a cylindrical (3D-polar) coordinate system to
encode the following three psycho-visual coordinates:
– Hue (dominant colour seen)
• Wavelength of the pure colour observed in the signal.
• Distinguishes red, yellow, green, etc.
• More the 400 hues can be seen by the human eye.
– Saturation (degree of dilution)
• Inverse of the quantity of “white” present in the signal. A pure colour has
100% saturation, the white and grey have 0% saturation.
• Distinguishes red from pink, marine blue from royal blue, etc.
• About 20 saturation levels are visible per hue.
– Brightness
• Amount of light emitted.
• Distinguishes the greylevels.
• The human eye perceives about 100 levels.
HSI model
• RGB to HSI Conversion
• HSI to RGB Conversion
original R

G G
 Pseudo-color image processing
• Assign colors to gray values based on a
specified criterion
• For human visualization and interpretation of
gray-scale events
• Intensity slicing
• Gray level to color transformations
 Intensity slicing
• 3-D view of intensity image

Color 1

Color 2

Image plane
 Intensity slicing (cont.)
• Alternative representation of intensity
slicing
• More slicing plane, more colors
Radiation test pattern 8 color regions

* See the gradual gray-level changes

X-ray image of a weld
焊接物
Rainfall statistics
Gray level to color
transformation
Washington D.C.

R G

Near
Infrared
B (sensitive
to biomass)

R+G+B near-infrared+G+B