Color Image Processing

Shaik Basheera,
Asst. Professor,
Dept of ECE
 Introduction
Why use color in image processing?
Color is a powerful descriptor
Object identification and extraction
eg. Face detection using skin colors
Humans can discern thousands of color shades and
intensities
c.f. Human discern only two dozen shades of grays
 Introduction
Color Image Processing divided into 2 types
Full color processing
Images are acquired from full-color sensor or
equipments such as TV Cameras
Pseudo-color processing
In the past decade, color sensors and processing
hardware are not available
Colors are assigned to a range of monochrome
intensities
 Color fundamentals
Perceiving the color is fully
physiopsychological phenomena that is not
fully understand
Physical phenomenon
Physical nature of color is known

Psysio-psychological phenomenon
How human brain perceive and interpret color?
 Isaac Newton discovered that the sun light
had 7 colors
 Chromatic light span the electromagnetic
spectrum (EM) from 400 to 700 nm
 The color that human perceive in an object =
the light reflected from the object
If a light of wavelength 500 to 570 nm reach
eye it will be treated as green

scene
Illumination source

reflection
eye
 Characteristics of Light
Light is represented into 1. Achromatic 2.
Chromatic light
Chromatic light spans in the range of 400 to
700 nm
Three basic qualities are used to describe the
quality of chromatic light
Radiance
Luminance
Brightness
 Chromatic Light Characteristics
Radiance: total amount of energy that flow from the
light source, measured in watts (W)
Luminance: amount of energy an observer perceives
from a light source, measured in lumens
Far infrared light: high radiance, but 0 luminance
Brightness: subjective descriptor that is hard to
measure, similar to the achromatic notion of
intensity
 How human eyes sense light?
Cones in Human eye are used for color vision
6-7 million cones are used to describe the
color of an object
65% of cones are used for Red
33% of cones are used to perceive
Green
2% are used for Perceive Blue

Primary colors: Defined CIE in 1931

Red = 700 nm
Green = 546.1nm
Blue = 435.8 nm
 Color Physics
There is no single color may be red, green or
Blue
Any color is the combination of these colors so
these are named as primary colors
Any color is the combination of the various
intensities of these color can produce all
visible colors
 Primary and Secondary Colors
Primary colors: RED, GREEN, BLUE
Secondary Colors: Adding these Primary
Colors can produce Secondary Colors
RED+GREEN= Yellow
RED+BLUE=Magenta
GEEN+BLUE=CYAN
 Characteristics of Colors
Colors are characterised based on HUE,
SATURATION, and BRIGHTNESS
HUE: The Dominant wave length that the
mixture of light waves. The dominant color
Perceived by Human
SATURATION: Purity or amount of white light
added to the hue.
BRIGHTNESS: Intensity
HUE and SATURATION are named as
Chromaticity.
 Tristimulus: The amount of RGB needed to
form any particular color are called Tristimulus
Denoted as X,Y,Z
Color that specified by tristimulus coefficients
are
x=X/X+Y+Z
Chromatic Diagram
 Chromatic Diagram
It is the color composition of red(x), green (y) any
value of x,y can generate z =1-(x+y)
The positions of the various spectrum colors from
violet to red are represented on the boundary of
tongue shaped diagram
Any color not on the boundary is middle of the
diagram is the mixture of many spectrums
The equal energy of the color is the equal
percentage of colors that added is the white color
Any points that draw between any two points of the
diagram
Line draw from equal energy position to the edge\
 Color Models
The main aim is to specify the color in a
standard, general acceptable manner
Color models are used to represent the color
using a coordinate system
Color models are classified based on two
categories
Towards Hardware ( Color Monitor& Printers)
Towards application(creation of color graphics and
animation)
 Hardware models & Application
Models
Hardware Models
1. RGB
2. CMY
3.CMYK
Application Models
1. HSI
 RGB Color Model
In this each color is represented as primary colors
This model work based on Cartesian coordinate
system
All color values are
Normalized
Pixel depth: the no.of bits
Used to represent a color
Named as pixel depth