Color systems

18/12/2023
Color fundamental
The human visual system can distinguish hundreds of thousands of different color shades and
intensities, but only around 100 shades of grey. Therefore, in an image, a great deal of extra
information may be contained in the color, and this extra information can then be used to simplify
image analysis, e.g. object identification and extraction based on color. Three independent
quantities are used to describe any particular color. The hue is determined by the dominant
wavelength. Visible colors occur between about 400nm (violet) and 700nm (red) on the
electromagnetic spectrum, as shown

The saturation is determined by the excitation purity, and depends on the amount of white light
mixed with the hue. A pure hue is fully saturated, i.e. no white light mixed in. Hue and saturation
together determine the chromaticity for a given color. Finally, the intensity is determined by the
actual amount of light, with more light corresponding to more intense colors. Achromatic light has
no color - its only attribute is quantity or intensity. Grey level is a measure of intensity. The
intensity is determined by the energy, and is therefore a physical quantity. On the other hand,
brightness or luminance is determined by the perception of the color, and is therefore
psychological. Given equally intense blue and green, the blue is perceived as much darker than the
green. Note also that our perception of intensity is nonlinear, with changes of normalized intensity
from 0.1 to 0.11 and from 0.5 to 0.55 being perceived as equal changes in brightness. Color
depends primarily on the reflectance properties of an object. We see those rays that are reflected,
while others are absorbed. However, we also must consider the color of the light source, and the
nature of human visual system. For example, an object that reflects both red and green will appear
green when there is green but no red light illuminating it, and conversely it will appear red in the
absence of green light. In pure white light, it will appear yellow (= red + green).

Characterization of light
If the light achromatic (void of color), if its only attribute is intensity. Gray level refers to a
scalar measure of it its intensity that ranges from black, to grays, and finally to white. Chromatic
light spans the ES from about 400 to 700 nm Chromatic light spans the ES from about 400 to
700 nm. Three basic quantities are used to describe the quality of a chromatic light source•
Radiance: total amount of energy flows from the light source. Luminance: amount of energy
perceive from light source Luminance: amount of energy perceive from light source. Brightness:
a subjective descriptor that is practically impossible to measure.

Tristimulus theory of color perception

human retina has 3 kinds of cones. The response of the
type of cone as a function of the wavelength of the each
light is shown in figure 2. The peaks for each curve incident
440nm (blue), 545nm (green) and 580nm (red). Note are at
last two actually peak in the yellow part of the that the
spectrum

Primary colors and secondary colors

CIE (Commission International edel’Eclariage) standard for primary color

– Red: 700 nm

– Green: 546.1 nm

– Blue: 435.8 nm

Primary color can be added to produce secondary colors produce secondary colors– Primary
colors can not produce all colors.

Pigments(colorants)– Define the primary colors to be the absorbing one and reflect other two

Color Models
Color models provide a standard way to specify a particular color, by defining a 3D coordinate
system, and a subspace that contains all constructible colors within a particular model. Any color
that can be specified using a model will correspond to a single point within the subspace it
defines. Each color model is oriented towards either specific hardware (RGB,CMY,YIQ), or
image processing applications (HSI).

In the RGB model

image consists of three independent image planes, one an
each of the primary colors: red, green and blue. (The in
standard wavelengths for the three primaries are as
shown. Specifying a particular color is by specifying
amount of each of the primary components present. the
Figure 5 shows the geometry of the RGB color model
specifying colors using a Cartesian coordinate system. for
greyscale spectrum, i.e. those colors made from equal The
amounts of each primary, lies on the line joining the
and white vertices This is an additive model, i.e. the black
colors present in the light add to form new colors, and is appropriate for the mixing of colors
light for example. The image on the left of figure 6 shows the additive mixing of red, green and
blue primaries to form the three secondary colors yellow (red + green), cyan (blue + green) and
magenta (red + blue), and white ((red + green + blue). The RGB model is used for colors
monitors and most video cameras

The CMY Model

The CMY (cyan-magenta-yellow) model is a subtractive model appropriate to absorption of
colors, for example due to pigments in paints. Whereas the RGB model asks what is added to
black to get a particular color, the CMY model asks what is subtracted from white. In this case,
the primaries are cyan, magenta and yellow, with red, green and blue as secondary colors

When a surface coated with cyan pigment is

illuminated by white light, no red light is
reflected, and similarly for magenta and
green, and yellow and blue. The relationship
between the RGB and CMY models is
given by:

Why does blue paint plus yellow

paint give green ?
As all schoolchildren know, the way to make green paint is to mix blue paint with yellow. But
how does this work? If blue paint absorbs all but blue light, and yellow absorbs blue only, when
combined no light should be reflected and black paint result. However, what actually happens is
that imperfections in the paint are exploited. In practice, blue paint reflects not only blue, but
also some green. Since the yellow paint also reflects green (since yellow = green + red), some
green is reflected by both pigments, and all other colors are abosrbed, resulting in green paint

The HSI Model

Color may be specified by the three quantities hue, saturation and intensity. This is the HSI
model, and the entire space of colors that may be specified in this way

Conversion between the RGB model and the HSI model is quite complicated. The intensity is
given by

where the quantities R, G and B are the amounts of the red, green and blue components, normalized
to the range [0,1]. The intensity is therefore just the average of the red, green and blue components.
The saturation is given by:
The YIQ Model
The YIQ (luminance-inphase-quadrature) model is a recoding
of RGB for color television, and is a very important model for
color image processing. The luminance (Y) component
contains all the information required for black and white
television, and captures our perception of the relative
brightness of particular colors. That we perceive green as much
lighter than red, and red lighter than blue, is indicated by their
respective weights of 0.587, 0.299 and 0.114 in the first row of
the conversion matrix above. These weights should be used
when converting a color image to greyscale if you want the
perception of brightness to remain the same. This is not the case
for the intensity component in an HSI image
The Y component is the same as the CIE primary Y

References
[1] R.C. Gonzales and R.E. Woods, Digital Image Processing, Addison-Wesley,
Reading, 1992.
[2] J.D. Foley, A. van Dam, S.K. Feiner and J.F. Hughes, Computer Graphics,
Principles and Practice, Addison-Wesley, Reading, 1990.
[3] Newton, Opticks, 4th Edition, Dover, New York, 1704/1952.
[4] E.B. Goldstein, Sensation and Perception, Brooks/Cole, California, 1989.