COL7(6)83: Digital Image Analysis
7. Colour Image
Processing
What is colour?
Light intensity is not a scalar
but depends on wavelength:
spectral power distribution
Eye has 3 types of cone cells
• Long, medium, short (LMS)
• Brain receives only cone responses
Spectral distributions that produce same
LMS response (“metamers”) are
indistinguishable to human visual system
Note: Perceived colour is not determined
by LMS response alone! The brain does
a lot more complex processing…
R = 0.95
G = 0.72
B = 0.71
R = 0.39
G = 0.38
B = 0.38
R = 0.92
G = 0.82
B = 0.89
Any* colour sensation in the eye can be
reproduced by a linear combination of 3
coloured lights (primaries)
l l l l
[s]
1 2 3
m = X m1 + Y m2 + Z m3
s1 s2 s3 Wright-Guild colour matching experiments
Intensities of primaries = tristimulus values X, Y, Z (could be negative for very intense colours!)
• Luminance: total intensity received by human eye
• Brightness: subjective perception of luminance
• Chromaticity: quality of colour independent of
intensity
Trichromatic coef cients:
X Y Z
x= y= z=
X+Y+Z X+Y+Z X+Y+Z
Note x + y + z = 1
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Chromaticity diagram
Colour blindness
Reduced or no functionality in one
(or more) of the three types of cones
→ Don’t rely only on colour to
convey information!
Normal vision Deuteranopia Tritanopia
Colour models
• Colour model: abstract coordinate system for describing colours as tuples of numbers
• Colour space: colour model + speci c mapping to absolute colorimetric quantities
Example:
• RGB colour model:
Create colours by adding X% red, Y% green, Z% blue
• sRGB colour space:
Chromaticities of red/green/blue primaries,
screen and ambient luminance levels,
gamma transformation function, …
Set of representable colours = gamut
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RGB colour model
Additive model: colour is formed by
superposition of red, green, blue lights
Grayscale = equal intensity in R, G, B
Typically 8 bits per channel:
“24-bit colour”
RGB image = 2D array of vectors
= vector of 2D arrays
Blue
Green
Red
CMY(K) colour model
Subtractive model: colour is formed by removing
light of different wavelengths, e.g. printer inks
Primaries: cyan (absorbs red), magenta
(absorbs green), yellow (absorbs blue)
Absorption is nonlinear!
Approximate conversion from RGB:
C=1−R M=1−G Y=1−B
In practice, absorption is imperfect: C = M = Y = 1 doesn’t give pure black
Include black K = min(C, M, Y) and compensate the rest, C ← (C − K)/(1 − K) etc.
Hue and saturation
Colours with different hues
Brightness
Colour = intensity/brightness & chromaticity
Saturation Chromaticity = hue & saturation
Different colours
with the same hue
Colour cube, constant-hue slice
Constant-hue slices
Various polar coordinate systems for colour:
HSL (hue, saturation, lightness), HSV (value), HSI (intensity)
We will only consider HSI
• Intensity I = (R + G + B)/3
• Hue H = angle around intensity axis
• Saturation S ≈ relative distance from intensity axis
H, S depend only on relative proportions R/(R + G + B), etc.
Warning: H changes discontinuously at red (0° 360°)
Device-independent colour spaces
CIE XYZ
• De ned based on data from Wright-Guild colour matching
experiments
CIELAB (L*a*b*)
• More perceptually uniform: distances in L*a*b* coordinates are
proportional to perceived changes in colour
1.0
sRGB 0.8
0.6
sRGB
• Standard colour space for images on the web 0.4
0.2
• Speci es gamma transformation: R ≈ Rlinear1/2.2, etc. 0.0
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
Linear
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Processing colour images
Human viewers can distinguish thousands of colours but only tens of gray levels
Pseudocolour image processing: map pixel values of non-colour images (intensity /
multispectral) to colour values for visualization
For intensity images (1 channel):
• Piecewise constant: highlight known intensity range(s) of interest
• Continuous function (e.g. linear interpolation): colormap
For multispectral images (>3 channels):
• Assign R, G, B to one component each (or linear combination of input components)
Saturated pixels highlighted
Infrared Red Green Blue
True colour Pseudocolour
(R, G, B) (IR, G, B)
Processing full-colour images
Simplest approach: per-component
transformations si = Ti(ri)
Example: scaling intensities
si = kri
Example: negative of a colour image
si = 1 − ri
Maps each colour to its complementary
colour (180° across in hue)
Chromaticity can be affected even if transformation is monotonically increasing!
R = 0.97 R = 0.90 R = 0.73
G = 0.79 G = 0.50 G = 0.13
B = 0.46 B = 0.10 B = 0.00
γ = 1/3 γ=1 γ=3
Tone and colour corrections
Tone correction: adjust brightness and contrast (analogous to intensity transformations
of grayscale images)
• Same transformation to all RGB components
• Or, transformation only to I component of HSI
Colour correction: adjust chromaticity (relative ratios of components)
Photo under warm light Gamma transformation with different γR, γG, γB
S × 0.5 Original S × 1.5
Histogram processing of colour images
0 50 100 150 200 250 0 50 100 150 200 250 0 50 100 150 200 250
Process each component’s histogram independently…
…or convert to HSI and process only histogram of I component?
Histogram equalization
on R, G, B components
Histogram equalization
on I component of HSI
Histogram equalization
on I component of HSI,
then S component scaled by 3
Spatial filtering
Linear spatial lters are equivalent in vector form or per-component:
∑
g(x, y) = w(s, t) f(x − s, y − t)
s,t
g1(x, y) ∑s,t w(s, t) f1(x − s, y − t)
g2(x, y) = ∑s,t w(s, t) f2(x − s, y − t)
g3(x, y) ∑s,t w(s, t) f3(x − s, y − t)
Not true for nonlinear lters e.g. median, bilateral
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Original Gaussian lter
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Original Excessive high-boost ltering
→ colour halos
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Homework
1. Read DIP Ch. 6.1–6.6
2.
