Image Processing

Color Image Processing
Dr A S Jalal
Class Presentation on Image Processing and Computer Vision by Dr. Anand Singh Jalal
Color Fundamentals
 Color is a powerful descriptor

 Often simplifies object
identification
 Humans can discern thousands of
color shades & intensities
Color Fundamentals …
In 1666 Sir Isaac Newton discovered that when a beam
of sunlight passes through a glass prism, the emerging
beam is split into a spectrum of colours
Light And The Electromagnetic Spectrum
 Light is just a particular part of the electromagnetic

spectrum that can be sensed by the human eye
The electromagnetic spectrum is split up according to
the wavelengths of different forms of energy
Color Fundamentals: Reflected Light
 The colours that we perceive are determined by

the nature of the light reflected from an object
 For example, if white
light is shone onto a

green object most
wavelengths are Colours
absorbed, while green Absorbed
light is reflected from

the object
 Chromatic light spans the electromagnetic spectrum
from approximately 400 to 700 nm
 Human colour vision is achieved through 6 to 7
million cones in each eye
3 basic qualities are used to describe the quality of a
chromatic light source:
 Radiance: the total amount of energy that flows
from the light source (measured in watts)
 Luminance: the amount of energy an observer
perceives from the light source (measured in lumens)
 Note we can have high radiance, but low
luminance
 Brightness: a subjective (practically unmeasurable)
notion that embodies the intensity of light
Cones
6 to 7 million cones divided in to three
principal sensing categories
65% of cones sensitive to red light
33% of cones sensitive to green light
2% of cones sensitive to blue light (blue

cones are most sensitive)
Why is the colour of STOP light at crossings Red in colour?
 Primary colors:
RGB
 The International Commission on Illumination (CIE) in
1931 designated specific wavelengths to the
primary colours
 Blue = 435.8 nm
 Green = 546.1 nm
 Red = 700.0 nm
No single colour can be called red, green or blue
Primary colours can be added to produce

secondary colours of light
Red,
Colours are
added Green,
Blue
Colours are Magenta,

subtracted (or Cyan,
absorbed) Yellow
Additive colour model Subtractive colour model

Any combination of two or Any combination of two
more colours results in a colours gives a colour with
colour with higher luminance lower luminance.
than the original colours. e.g. in mixing watercolours,
e.g. in a cathode ray tube a the resulting colour becomes
white point results from the darker and darker, and
combination of red, green ideally it will finally becomes
and blue points black
Characteristics to distinguish one colour

from another
Brightness Hue Saturation
It is the chromatic It is an attribute It refers to the
notion of intensity associated with the relative purity or the
dominant wavelength in amount of white light
a mixture of light waves mixed with a hue.
Hue + Saturation  Chromaticity
 The amounts of Red, Green & Blue needed to form
any particular color are called the Tristimulus
Values, denoted by X, Y & Z respectively.
 A color is then specified by its trichromatic
coefficients, defined as
CIE Chromaticity diagram
 Specifying colors systematically can be
achieved using the CIE chromaticity diagram
 On this diagram the x-axis represents the
proportion of red and the y-axis represents

the proportion of green used
 The proportion of blue used in a color is
calculated as:
z = 1 – (x + y)
Chromaticity Diagram
Green: 62% green, 25%

red and 13% blue
Red: 32% green, 67%
red and 1% blue
Chromaticity Diagram …
 Any color located on the boundary of the
chromaticity chart is fully saturated
 The point of equal energy has equal amounts of
each color and is the CIE standard for pure white
 Any straight line joining two points in the diagram
defines all of the different colors that can be
obtained by combining these two colors additively
 This can be easily extended to three points
Chromaticity Diagram …
 Entire color range cannot
be displayed based on any
three colors
 The triangle shows the
typical color gamut
produced by RGB monitors
 The irregular shape is the
gamut achieved by high
quality color printers
Color Models
 It is a specification of a coordinate system & a
subspace within that system where each color is
represented by a single point
 There are different ways to model color
 We will consider two very popular models used
in color image processing:

 RGB (Red Green Blue)
 HIS (Hue Saturation Intensity)
Colour Models : RGB
 In the RGB model each color appears in its primary
spectral components of red, green and blue
 The model is based on a Cartesian coordinate system
 RGB values are at 3 corners
 Cyan magenta and yellow are at three other corners
 Black is at the origin
 White is the corner furthest from the origin
 Different colors are points on or inside the cube

represented by RGB vectors
Color Models : RGB …
 Images represented in the RGB color model consist
of three component images – one for each primary
color
 When fed into a monitor these images are
combined to create a composite color image
 The number of bits used to represent each pixel is
referred to as the color depth
 A 24-bit image is often3 referred to as a full color
image as it allows 28 = 16,777,216 colors
24-bit RGB image = 16,777,216 colours
Many systems today limited to 256 colours
Many applications require fewer colours!!
Safe RGB Colors

Subset of colors that are
• likely to be reproduced faithfully
• Reasonably independently of
viewer H/W capabilities
Assumption (Accepted standard notation):
Minimum colours that can be faithfully reproduced by any
system is 256
Remaining 216
de facto standard for safe colours,
especially in Internet Applications
The no. of colours these RGB

triplets give us ? (6)3 = 216 !!!
The HSI Color Model
 RGB is useful for hardware implementations
 However, RGB is not a particularly intuitive way in
which to describe colors
 Rather when people describe colors they tend to use
hue, saturation and brightness
 RGB is great for color generation, but HSI
is great for color description
The HSI Color Model …
 The HSI model uses three measures to describe
colors:
 Hue: A color attribute that describes a pure color (pure
yellow, orange or red)
 Saturation: Gives a measure of how much a pure color
is diluted with white light
 Intensity: Brightness is nearly impossible to measure
because it is so subjective. Instead we use intensity.
Intensity is the same achromatic notion that we have
seen in grey level images
Now the intensity component
of any color can be
determined by passing a
plane perpendicular to
the intensity axis and
containing the color
point
The intersection of the plane
with the intensity axis gives us
the intensity component of the
color
 In a similar way we can extract the hue from the RGB
color cube
 Consider a plane defined by
the three points cyan, black
and white
 All points contained in
this plane must have the
same hue (cyan) as black
and white cannot contribute
hue information to a color
Consider if we look straight down at the RGB cube as it
was arranged previously
We would see a hexagonal
shape with each primary
color separated by 120°
and secondary colors
at 60° from the primaries
So the HSI model is
composed of a vertical
intensity axis and the locus of color points that lie on
planes perpendicular to that axis
To the right we see a hexagonal
shape and an arbitrary color
point
 The hue is determined by an
angle from a reference point,
usually red
 The saturation is the distance from the origin to the point
 The intensity is determined by how far up the vertical

intenisty axis this hexagonal plane sits (not apparent
from this diagram
Because the only important things are the angle and
the length of the saturation vector this plane is also
often represented as a circle or a triangle
Converting From RGB To HSI
Achromatic axis
Hue
[1,1,1]
H
[0,0,0] Saturation
Brightness
Converting From RGB To HSI …
Given a colour as R, G, and B its H, S, and I values are
calculated as follows:
if B G 1
1
2
R G R B
H cos 1
360 if B G R G
2
R B G B
2
3
S 1 min R,G,B I 1
3
R G B
R G B
Converting From HSI To RGB …
Given a colour as H, S, and I it’s R, G, and B values are
 RG sector (0 <= H < 120 )
S cos H
R I 1
cos 60 H
G 3I R B B I1 S
Given a colour as H, S, and I it’s R, G, and B values are
 GB sector (120 <= H < 240 )
The given value of H is in this sector –
first subtract 1200 from it
H = H - 1200
S cos H 120
R I1 S G I 1 B 3I R G
cos H 60
 BR sector (240 <= H <= 360 )
The given value of H is in this sector – first subtract 2400 from it
H = H - 2400
R 3I G B G I1 S
S cos H 240
B I 1
cos H 180
Pseudo coloring
Eye can distinguish between ~30 different grey-levels
... and 350,000 different colors
Display gray-level image as a color image for easier

visual inspection
The amount of information in the gray-level image is not changed

Class Presentation on Image Processing and Computer Vision by Dr. Anand Singh Jalal 43
Pseudo coloring …
The process of assigning different colour to
every intensity value available in a Gray scale
image is known as pseudo-colour processing.
Advantage:
Many image features & their comparison can be
readily done using pseudo-colouring.
fR(x,y)
f(x,y) Colour Coordinate fG(x,y)

Gray-level Transformation
image fB(x,y)
Intensity Slicing
(A Technique for Pseudo colouring)
 For 3-D images, use a plane at f(x,y)=li to slice
the image function into two levels
 Any pixel whose gray level is above the plane is
coded with one colour, and any pixel below the
plane is coded with the other
 The result is a two-colour image whose relative
appearance can be controlled by moving the
slicing plane up and down the gray-level axis
 In general, we can use multi-level slicing and
colour coding
Intensity Slicing ...
(A Technique for Pseudo colouring)
Any Questions ?

Image Processing

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Color Image Processing

 Color is a powerful descriptor

color shades & intensities

 Light is just a particular part of the electromagnetic

 The colours that we perceive are determined by

light is shone onto a

absorbed, while green Absorbed

light is reflected from

33% of cones sensitive to green light

2% of cones sensitive to blue light (blue

No single colour can be called red, green or blue

Primary colours can be added to produce

Colours are Magenta,

Additive colour model Subtractive colour model

Characteristics to distinguish one colour

Hue + Saturation  Chromaticity

proportion of red and the y-axis represents

Green: 62% green, 25%

 We will consider two very popular models used

in color image processing:

 Cyan magenta and yellow are at three other corners

 Black is at the origin

 White is the corner furthest from the origin

 Different colors are points on or inside the cube

Many applications require fewer colours!!

Safe RGB Colors

The no. of colours these RGB

 The intensity is determined by how far up the vertical

Display gray-level image as a color image for easier

The amount of information in the gray-level image is not changed

f(x,y) Colour Coordinate fG(x,y)

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