Digital Image Processing, 2nd ed.

1
www.imageprocessingbook.com

Chapter 6
Color
Image
Processing
www.ImageProcessingPlace.com
w.csie.ntnu.edu.tw/~violet/IP93/Chapter06.ppt
© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods
 Digital Image Processing, 2nd ed. 2
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Color Fundamentals

• When color is available, it gives much more

information about an image than intensity
alone.
• Color is very useful for recognition of objects
in an image both for humans and computers.

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Color Fundamentals

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Color Fundamentals
• The actual color perceived by a human of an object
depends on both the color of the illumination and the
reflectivity of the object, as well as the sensitivity of
human perception.
• Objects appear to be different colors because they absorb
and reflect different colors of light. A blue object, for
example, reflects blue light while absorbing other colors.
• Grey objects or grey images reflect and absorb all
frequencies of light about equally, so they do not appear
colored.

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Color Fundamentals
• Color is sensed by the eye using three kinds of cones, each sensitive primarily to
red, green or blue, though there is significant overlap.
• We refer to red, green and blue
as the primary colors,
and denote to set as RGB:
blue = 435.8nm
green = 546.1nm
red = 700nm
• Approximately:
65% cones are sensitive to red
33% cones are sensitive to green
2% cones are sensitive to blue

© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods

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Color Fundamentals
• Secondary colors:
Magenta (red + blue)
Cyan (green + blue)
Yellow (red + green)

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Color Fundamentals

Subtractive color - reflected light

Additive color - emitted light

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Chromaticity
• Brightness: associated with intensity
• Hue: associated with the dominant wavelength in a
mixture of light waves. It represents dominant color as
perceived by an observer.
• Saturation: refers to the relative purity or the amount of
white light mixed with a hue.

Hue & saturation taken together are called chromaticity

© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods

 Digital Image Processing, 2nd ed. 9
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Chromaticity Diagram

• The amounts of red, green, and blue needed to form any

particular color are called tristimulus values (X, Y and Z).
These represent three dimensional coordinates of any
perceived color.
• The tristimulus values can be normalized to give
trichromatic coefficients, x (red), y (green) and z (blue).
Note that because of normalization: x + y + z = 1.
• Since x, y and z are not independent, only x and y are
enough to specify a color.

© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods

 Digital Image Processing, 2nd ed. 10
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Chromaticity Diagram

• If the wavelength of the pure colors are plotted in these

coordinates, and the mixtures of these wavelengths are
plotted inside the pure colors, the result is known as the
CIE (International Commission on Illumination)
chromaticity diagram.
• In the chromaticity diagram, white light is defined as the
mixture of equal amounts of all wavelengths of visible
light.

© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods

 Digital Image Processing, 2nd ed. 11
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Chromaticity Diagram

Color gamut: X (red)

The color range
produced by an Y (green)
RGB monitor
Z (blue) =
(1-(X+Y))
Color printing
gamut is
irregular and
more limited

© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods

 Digital Image Processing, 2nd ed. 12
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Chromaticity Diagram

Exercise: [2, Problem 6.1]

Give the percentage of red

(X), green (Y), and blue (Z)
light required to generate
the point labeled “warm
white” in Fig. 6.5.

Exercise: [2, Problem 6.2]

© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods

 Digital Image Processing, 2nd ed. 13
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Color Models -- RGB Model

© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods

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Color Models -- RGB Model

© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods

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Color Models -- RGB Model

© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods

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Color Models -- RGB Model

For most graphics

images used for
Internet applications,
a set of 216 colors
has been selected to
represent “safe
colors” which
should be reliably
displayed on
computer monitors.

© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods

 Digital Image Processing, 2nd ed. 17
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Color Models -- RGB Model

Exercise: [2, Problems 6.5, 6.7, 6.11]

© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods

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Color Models -- CMY and CMYK Models

• An RGB to CMY conversion

 C  1  R 
 M   1  G 
    
 Y  1  B 

© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods

 Digital Image Processing, 2nd ed. 19
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Color Image Representation in Matlab

Image Types

1. Intensity images
2. Binary images
3. RGB images
4. Indexed images

© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods

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Color Image Representation in Matlab

RGB Images

© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods

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Color Image Representation in Matlab

RGB Images

>> I = imread('filename');
>> imtool(I)

© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods

 Digital Image Processing, 2nd ed. 22
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Color Image Representation in Matlab

RGB Images

© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods

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Color Image Representation in Matlab

Indexed Images

© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods

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Color Image Representation in Matlab

© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods

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Color Image Representation in Matlab

© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods

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Color Image Representation in Matlab

RED GREEN BLUE

© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods
 Digital Image Processing, 2nd ed. 27
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Color Image Representation in Matlab

>> imfinfo bt.jpg
ans =
Filename: 'bt.jpg'
FileModDate: '19-Dec-2007 11:07:32'
FileSize: 789895
Format: 'jpg'
FormatVersion: ''
Width: 2048
Height: 1536
BitDepth: 24
ColorType: 'truecolor'
FormatSignature: ''
NumberOfSamples: 3
CodingMethod: 'Huffman'
CodingProcess: 'Sequential'
Comment: {}

© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods

 Digital Image Processing, 2nd ed. 28
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Color Image Representation in Matlab

>> f=imread('bt.jpg');
>> whos f
Name Size Bytes Class Attributes
f 1536x2048x3 9437184 uint8
>> imshow(f);
>> fR = f(:, :, 1);
>> fG = f(:, :, 2);
>> fB = f(:, :, 3);
>> f1=cat(3, fR, fG, fB);
>> imshow(f1)
© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods
 Digital Image Processing, 2nd ed. 29
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Color Image Representation in Matlab

>> f = imread(‘iris.jpg');
>> [X1, map1] = rgb2ind(f, 8, 'nodither');
>> [X2, map2] = rgb2ind(f, 8, 'dither');
>> imshow(X1, map1), figure, imshow(X2, map2);
map1 =
0.1882 0.1961 0.1765
0.7333 0.6588 0.6039
0.4667 0.4196 0.3922
0.7804 0.7961 0.8039
0.3333 0.3137 0.2980
0.5765 0.5176 0.4745
0.7451 0.7608 0.7725
0.7961 0.8235 0.8353
© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods
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Color Image Representation in Matlab

>> g = rgb2gray(f);
>> g1 = dither(g);
>> imshow(g);
>> figure, imshow(g1);

© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods

 Digital Image Processing, 2nd ed. 31
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The Basics of Color Image Processing

Three Principal Areas
1. Color Transformations:
Processing the pixels of each color plane based strictly on
their values and not on their spatial (neighborhood)
coordinates. It is similar to the grayscale image intensity
transformations
2. Spatial Processing of Individual Color Planes:
Spatial filtering of each color planes and is similar to the
grayscale image spatial filtering.
3. Color Vector Processing
Processing all components of a color image simultaneously,
where each pixel is represented as a vector.

© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods

 Digital Image Processing, 2nd ed. 32
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Color Transformations

• Extension of the gray level transformations to color space

• In theory any transformation can be done in any color space
• Some transformations are better suited for specific color spaces
• The cost of color space transformations must be considered
© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods
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Color Transformations

g(x, y) = T[f(x, y)]

or
si = Ti(r1, r2,…,rn), i = 1, 2,…,n
where ri and si are color components of f(x, y) and g(x, y)

© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods

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Color Transformations
Intensity transformation

g(x, y) = k f(x, y), 0 < k < 1

or
si = k ri, i = 1, 2,…,n

CMY: si = k ri + (1-k), i = 1, 2, 3
RGB: si = k ri , i = 1, 2, 3
HSI: si = ri , i = 1, 2, s3 = k r3

The conversion calculations are more computationally

intense than the intensity transformation itself.
Exercise: [2, Problem 6.10]
© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods
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Color Transformations
Intensity transformation

© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods

 Digital Image Processing, 2nd ed. 36
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Color Transformations
Intensity transformation

© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods

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Color Transformations
Color Complements Transformation
• Identical to the gray-scale negative transformation.
• Complements are basically given by subtracting one color from
white, or by changing a hue by 180 degrees.
• Useful for visualization of image detail obscured by dark regions.

© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods

 Digital Image Processing, 2nd ed. 38
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Color Transformations
Color Complements Transformation

Exercise:
[2, Problems 6.20]

© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods

 Digital Image Processing, 2nd ed. 39
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Assignment
[1, Appendix B]
Create ICE graphical user interface and submit its
softcopy until April 24, 2008. This is a group
assignment and group leader will submit it by
email. Test this function ICE with all parameters
discussed in [1, Ch. 6].

© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods

 Digital Image Processing, 2nd ed. 40
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References
1. Gonzalez R. C., Woods R. E., Eddins S. L., Digital Image
Processing Using Matlab, Pearson Education, 2006.
2. Gonzalez R. C., Woods R. E., Digital Image Processing,
Pearson Education, 2006.
3. http://www.imageprocessingplace.com/
4. http://www.cs.umu.se/kurser/TDBC30/VT05/

© 2002 R. C. Gonzalez & R. E. Woods