CoE4TN4

Image Processing
Chapter 6: Color Image
Processing
 Color Image Processing
• The use of color in image processing is motivated by:
1. Color is important in object recognition
2. Human eyes can discern thousands of colors

• Color image processing:

1. Full color image processing
2. Pseudo color processing

• Full color processing: image is acquired by a full-color

sensor
• Pseudo color processing: assigning a shade of color to a
particular monochrome intensity or range of intensities

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 Color Image Processing
• In 1666 Newton discovered that a beam of sunlight passed
through a prism will break into a spectrum of colors ranging
from violet at one end to red at the other
• Color spectrum: violet, blue, green yellow, orange, and red.
• No color in the spectrum end abruptly

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 Color Image Processing
• Color perceived from an object is determined by the nature
of light reflected from that object.
• An object reflecting light that is balanced in all visible light
appears white.
• An objects that favors reflectance in a limited range of the
visible spectrum exhibits a specific color

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 Color Image Processing
• Achromatic light (without color) is described by intensity
(amount)
• Chromatic light is described by 3 quantities:
1. Radiance
2. Luminance
3. Brightness
• Radiance: total amount of energy that flows from the light
source
• Luminance: a measure of the amount of energy an observer
perceives from a light source
– Infrared source: zero luminance
• Brightness: a subjective quantity

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 Color image processing
• Cones can be divided into three principal sensing categories:
red, green and blue

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 Color image processing
• Structure of human eye: all colors are seen as variable
combinations of 3 primary colors, Red, Green and Blue
• Primary colors can be added to produce secondary colors:
– Magenta: (red plus blue)
– Cyan: (green plus blue)
– Yellow: (red plus green)
• Mixing three primary colors produce white.
• Mixing a secondary color with its opposite primary color
produces white

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 Color image processing
• Color TV: an example of the additive nature of light colors
• Interior of TV tube: a large array of triangular dot patterns of
electron sensitive phosphor
• Each dot in a triangle produces one of the primary colors
• Intensity of red-emitting phosphor is modulated by an
electron gun.
• Similarly for green-emitting and blue-emitting
• Three primary colors are added and received by the eye as a
full-color image

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 Color image processing
• One color from another is distinguished by 3 factors:
1. Brightness
2. Hue
3. Saturation
• Hue: dominant wavelength (color) in a mixture of light
waves
• Saturation: relative purity or the amount of white light mixed
with a hue
– Pink is less saturated than red

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 Color image processing
• The amounts of red, green and blue needed to form a
particular color are called tri-stimulus X, Y, Z
• A color is specified by its tri-chromatic coefficients:
x= X/(X+Y+Z)
y= Y/(X+Y+Z)
z= Z/(X+Y+Z)
– x+y+z=1

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• Another approach for
specifying colors is to
use CIE chromaticity
diagram which shows
color composition as a
function of x (red) and y
(green).
• Various spectrum colors
are indicated around the
boundary of tongue-
shaped diagram (pure
colors).

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• Any point not actually on the boundary represents some
mixture of spectrum colors
• Any point on the boundary of chart is fully saturated.
• A straight line segment joining any two points in the diagram
defines all different colors that can be obtained by combining
these two colors additively.
• A line drawn from the point of equal energy (white) to any
point on the boundary will define all the shades on that color
• To determine colors that can be obtained from any three given
colors, we draw connecting lines to each of the three color
points
• Any color inside the triangle can be produced by various
combinations of the three initial colors

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 Color Models (color space or color system)
• Color models: used to specify colors in a standard way
• Color model is a coordinate system where each color is
represented by a single point
• RGB (red, green, blue)
• CMY (cyan, magenta, yellow)
• HIS (hue, saturation, intensity)

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 Color image processing

• Each model is oriented toward a hardware or application.

• RGB: color monitors, cameras, color image processing
• CMY: color monitor
• HIS: color image processing
– HIS has the advantage that it decouples color and gray level
information in an image making it suitable for many gray scale
techniques discussed before

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 RGB
• Each color appears in its primary spectral components of red,
green and blue
• Different colors in this model are points on or inside the cube
• Number of bits used to represent each pixel in RGB space is
called the pixel depth
• If 8 bit is used to represent each color, 24-bit RGB color
image is obtained
• Total number of colors: (28)3

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 RGB
• A subset of colors that are likely to be reproduced reasonably
independent of viewer hardware is called safe RGB color
• 216 colors have become the de facto standard for safe colors
• Each of 216 safe color is formed from three RGB values but
each value can only be 0, 51, 102, 153, 204 or 255.

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 CMY
• Most devices that deposit colored pigments on paper (color
printers and copiers) require CMY data input
• Equal amounts of pigments primaries, cyan, magenta and
yellow should produce black
• In practice combing these colors produces a muddy looking
black
• In order to produce true black a fourth color black is added
(CMYK)
• When publishers are talking about four color printing they are
referring to CMY plus black

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 HSI
• RGB and CMY color models are not well suited for
describing colors in terms that are practical for human
interpretation
• HSI (hue, saturation and intensity) decouples intensity
components from the color-carrying information
• Hue: dominant color
• Saturation: relative purity or the amount of white mixed with
a hue

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HSI

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HSI

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Manipulating HSI

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 Manipulating HSI
• We can manipulate H,
S and I independently
and then convert them
back to RGB to see the
effects.
• Changing to 0 the blue
and green regions in
Hue image
• Reduce by half the
saturation of the cyan
region
• Reduce by half the
intensity of central
white region

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 Pseudo-color image processing

• Assigning colors to monochrome images

• Different approaches:
– Intensity slicing
– Gray-level to color transformations
– Filtering approach

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 Pseudo-color image processing
Intensity slicing
– The range of gray-levels (black to white) is divided into a
number of intervals
– A different color is assigned to each interval

Color 2

Color 1
Gray-level

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Pseudo-color image processing

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 Pseudo-color image processing
Gray-level to color transformations:
• Three different transformations are performed on the gray-
level image
• The results are fed into red, green, and blue guns of a color
display

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 Pseudo-color image processing
Filtering approach
• Similar to the pervious approach.
• Fourier transform of a gray-level image is modified
independently by three filter functions
• Three images are generated that are fed into red, green, and
blue guns of a color display

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 Pseudo-color image processing

Filter IFT Additional

processing
Additional Color
TF Filter IFT
processing
Display
Additional
Filter IFT
processing

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