Color Fundamentals

• Color Image Processing is divided into two major areas:

• 1) Full-color processing
• Images are acquired with a full-color sensor, such as a
color TV camera or color scanner
• Used in publishing, visualization, and the Internet
• 2) Pseudo color processing
• Assigning a color to a particular monochrome intensity
or range of intensities
 Color Fundamentals
• In 1666, Sir Isaac Newton discovered that when a beam of
sunlight passes through a glass prism, the emerging beam
of light is split into a spectrum of colors ranging from violet
at one end to red at the other
 Color Fundamentals
• Visible light as a narrow band of frequencies in EM
• A body that reflects light that is balanced in all visible
wavelengths appears white
• However, a body that favors reflectance in a limited range
of the visible spectrum exhibits some shades of color
• Green objects reflect wavelength in the 500 nm to 570 nm
range while absorbing most of the energy at other
wavelengths
 Color Fundamentals
• If the light is achromatic (void of color), its only attribute is
its intensity, or amount
• Chromatic light spans EM from 380 to 780 nm
• Three basic quantities to describe the quality:
• 1) Radiance is the total amount of energy that flows from
the light source, and it is usually measured in watts (W)
• 2) Luminance, measured in lumens (lm), gives a measure of
the amount of energy an observer perceives from a light
source
• For example, light emitted from a source operating in the
far infrared region of the spectrum could have significant
energy (radiance), but an observer would hardly perceive
it; its luminance would be almost zero
 Color Fundamentals
• 3) Brightness is a subjective descriptor that is practically
impossible to measure. It embodies the achromatic notion
of intensity and is one of the key factors in describing color
sensation
 Color Fundamentals

• Cones are the sensors in the eye responsible for color

vision. 6 to 7 million cones in the human eye can be divided
into three principle categories: red, green, and blue
 Color Fundamentals
• Approximately 65% of all cones are sensitive to red light,
33% are sensitive to green light, and only about 2% are
sensitive to blue (but the blue cones are the most sensitive)
• According to CIE (International Commission on
Illumination) wavelengths of blue = 435.8 nm, green =
546.1 nm, and red = 700 nm
A substance that
imparts black or
Color Fundamentals
white or a color to
other materials-
Pigmant
 Color Fundamentals
• To distinguish one color from another are brightness, hue,
and saturation
• Brightness embodies the achromatic notion of intensity
• Hue is an attribute associated with the dominant
wavelength in a mixture of light waves. Hue represents
dominant color as perceived by an observer. Thus, when we
call an object red, orange, or yellow, we are referring to its
hue
• Saturation refers to the relative purity or the amount of
white light mixed with a hue. The pure spectrum colors are
fully saturated. Colors such as pink and lavender are less
saturated, with the degree of saturation being inversely
proportional to the amount of white light added
 Color Fundamentals
• Hue and saturation taken together are called Chromaticity
• Therefore a color may be characterized by its brightness
and chromaticity
• The amounts of red, green, and blue needed to form any
particular color are called the Tristimulus values and are
denoted, X, Y, and Z, respectively
• Tri-chromatic coefficients
X Y Z
x y z
X Y  Z X Y  Z X Y  Z

x  y  z 1
 Color Fundamentals
• Another approach for specifying colors is to use the CIE
chromaticity diagram
 Color Fundamentals
• For any value of x and y, the corresponding value of z is
obtained by noting that z = 1-(x+y)
• 62% green, 25% red, and 13% blue
• Pure colors are at boundary which are fully saturated
• Any point within boundary represents some mixture of
spectrum colors
• Equal energy and equal fractions of the three primary
colors represents white light
• The saturation at the point of equal energy is zero
• Chromaticity diagram is useful for color mixing
Color Fundamentals

Color Gamut produced

by RGB monitors

Color Gamut produced

by high quality color
printing device
 Color Fundamentals
• Printing gamut is irregular because color printing is a
combination of additive and subtractive color mixing, a
process that is much more difficult to control than that of
displaying colors on a monitor, which is based on the
addition of three highly controllable light primaries
 Color Models
• Also known as color space or color system
• Purpose is to facilitate the specification of colors in some
standard, generally accepted way
• Oriented either toward hardware (such as monitors and
printers) or toward applications (color graphics for
animation)
• Hardware oriented models most commonly used in
practices are the RGB model for color monitors or color
video cameras, CMY and CMYK models for color printing,
and the HSI model, which corresponds closely with the way
humans describe and interpret color.
• HSI model also has the advantage that it decouples the
color and gray-scale information in an image
 RGB Color Models
• Each color appears in its primary spectral components of
red, green, and blue.
• Model based on a Cartesian coordinate system
 RGB Color Models
• RGB primary values are at three corners; the secondary
colors cyan, magenta, and yellow are at the other corners;
black is at the origin; and white is at the corner
• In this model, the gray scale (points of equal RGB values)
extends from black to white along the line joining these
two points
• The different colors in this model are points on or inside
the cube, and are defined by vectors extending from the
origin
• RGB images consist three images (R, G, and B planes)
• When fed into an RGB monitor, these three images
combine on the screen to produce a composite color image
 RGB Color Models

• Number of bits used to represent each pixel in RGB space is

called the pixel depth
• RGB image has 24 bit pixel depth
• True color or full color image is a 24 bit RGB image
• Total colors in 24-bit image is (28)3 = 16,777,216
RGB Color Models
 RGB Color Models
• Many systems in use today are limited to 256 colors
• Many applications require few colors only
• Given the variety of systems in current use, it is of
considerable interest to have subset of colors that are likely
to be reproduced faithfully, this subset of colors are called
the set of safe RGB colors, or the set of all-systems-safe
colors
• In internet applications, they are called safe Web colors or
safe browser colors
• On the assumption that 256 colors is the minimum number
of colors that can be reproduced faithfully
• Forty of these 256 colors are known to be processed
differently by various operating systems
RGB Color Models
 CMY and CMYK Color Models
• CMY are the secondary colors of light, or, alternatively, the
primary colors of pigments
• For example, when a surface coated with cyan pigment is
illuminated with white light, no red light is reflected from
the surface because cyan subtracts red light from reflected
white light
• Color printers and copiers require CMY data input or
perform RGB to CMY conversion internally
 C  1  R 
 M   1  G 
    
 Y  1  B 
 CMY and CMYK Color Models
• Equal amounts of the pigment primaries, cyan, magenta,
and yellow should produce black
• In practice, combining these colors for printing produces a
muddy-looking black
• So, in order to produce true black, a fourth color, black, is
added, giving rise to the CMYK color model
 HSI Color Model
• Unfortunately, the RGB, CMY, and other similar color
models are not well suited for describing colors in terms
that are practical for human interpretation
• For example, one does not refer to the color of an
automobile by giving the percentage of the primaries
composing its color
• We do not think of color images as being composed of
three primary images that combine to form that single
image
• When human view a color object, we describe it by its hue,
saturation, and brightness
HSI Color Model
Converting from RGB to HSI

 if B  G
H 
360   if B  G

 1 
[( R  G )  ( R  B )]
1  
  cos  2
1/ 2 
 [( R  G ) 2
 ( R  B )(G  B )] 
 

3
S  1 [min( R, G, B)]
( R  G  B)

1
I  ( R  G  B)
3
 Converting from HSI to RGB

• RG sector: 0  H  120

B  I (1  S )

 S cos H 
R  I 1   
 cos(60  H ) 

G  3I  ( R  B)
 Converting from HSI to RGB

• GB sector: 120  H  240

H  H  120

R  I (1  S )
 S cos H 
G  I 1   
 cos(60  H ) 

B  3I  ( R  G)
 Converting from HSI to RGB

• GB sector: 240  H  360

H  H  240

G  I (1  S )

 S cos H 
B  I 1   
 cos(60  H ) 

R  3I  (G  B)
 HSI Color Model
• HSI (Hue, saturation, intensity) color model, decouples the
intensity component from the color-carrying information
(hue and saturation) in a color image
 Pseudocolor Image Processing
• Pseudocolor (false color) image processing consists of
assigning colors to gray values based on a specified
criterion
• It is different than the process associated with the color
images
• Principal use of pseudocolor is for human visualization and
interpretation of gray scale events in an image or sequence
of images
• Two methods for pseudocolor image processing:
• 1) Intensity Slicing
• 2) Intensity to Color Transformations
 Intensity Slicing
• Also called density slicing and piece wise linear function
• If an image is interpreted as a 3-D function, the method can
be viewed as one of placing planes parallel to the
coordinate plane of the image; each plane then “slices” of
the function in the area of intersection
Intensity Slicing
Intensity Slicing
Intensity Slicing
Intensity Slicing
 Intensity to Color Transformations
• Achieving a wider range of pseudocolor enhancement
results than simple slicing technique
• Idea underlying this approach is to perform three
independent transformations on the intensity of any input
pixel
• Three results are then fed separately into the red, green,
and blue channels of a color television monitor
• This produces a composite image whose color content is
modulated by the nature of the transformation functions
• Not the functions of position
• Nonlinear function
Intensity to Color Transformations
Intensity to Color Transformations
Intensity to Color Transformations
Intensity to Color Transformations