- This topic has 19 replies, 9 voices, and was last updated 13 years, 9 months ago by
.
-
The discussion in the “black, white & gray all over” thread lead me to wonder how one might quantitatively evaluate the “grayness” of a picture, which in turn lead me to write a quick ?n dirty app last night. I found the results pretty interesting, so I thought I?d share it here.
The app is written in C# and requires .NET Framework 2.0 (which should allow it to run under Mono for the Mac/Linux people, but no guarantees). It?s a pretty simple app, so I have no problem sharing the source, too. If you?re interested in a copy, just PM me and let me know if you want the binary or binary & source. If there?s enough interest, I can just upload it to a public repository somewhere and post a link.
The user interface is pretty simple:
Enter the URL or file location in the Image URL box and click Load. This displays the picture in the area below. The “Max RGB Error” is the maximum deviation from pure gray that you?re interested in and defaults to 10% of the RGB range (10% of 256 = about 25). Use the Refresh button to refresh the display if the Max RGB Error is changed. The Display Method selects which error analysis to display (there are 9). I?ll cover each display method in a separate post so keep from having one monster post.
First, some definitions:
Most probably already know this, but color images are coded using values with a range of 0 to 255 with a separate value for each of the red, green, and blue components. So, RGB(255,255,255) is the max of all 3 components and equals white, while RGB(0,0,0) is black and RGB(255,0,0) is pure red.
As used here, the Average Gray Value (AGV) of a pixel is the average of the R, G, and B components (R+G+B / 3). A pixel with an RGB of (128, 72, 106) would have an AGV of 102.
Component Error (CE) is the absolute value of the difference between the actual value of an RGB component and its pixel?s AGV. So, for the pixel with RGB(128, 72, 106) and an AGV of 102, the CE for red is 128-102 = 26, the CE(G) = 30, and the CE(B) = 4.
I?ve picked a couple of pictures from the thread just to illustrate the display modes (not picking on anybody or implying anything about these pics). Click on any picture to open a full-size version.
Display Method: Normal
Displays the picture normally:
Display Method: Errors in red
Highlight in red all pixels with any component error that exceeds the Max RGB Error. Error Count is the number of red pixels and the percentage of red pixels versus total pixel count:
Display Method: Error mask
Same as Errors in red, except all error pixels are white and everything else is black:
Display Method: Average error distance
Illustrates the distance that the average component error is from the max error. For our sample pixel RGB(128, 72, 106), the average CE is 20. With a max error of 25, that scales to 20/25 * 255 = 204, so the pixel would get colored RGB(204,204,204):
Display Method: Largest error distance
Same as previous, but uses whichever component error is largest. For our sample pixel, the largest CE is 30, which scales to the max value of 255, so the pixel would be colored white (255,255,255):
Display Method: Largest error distance (color coded)
Same as Largest error distance, but colors the pixels with the component that has the largest error instead of gray. For our sample pixel, green has the largest CE at 30 which scales to the max value of 255, so our pixel would be colored pure green (0,255,0):
Display Method: RGB error distance
Changes the color component of each pixel to show its relative distance from the max error value. For our sample pixel, CE(R)=26 which scales to 255, CE(G)=30 which scales to 255, and CE(B)=4 which scales to 4/25 * 255 = 41 so the pixel would be colored (255,255,41):
Display Method: Subtract gray
Subtracts the lowest color component value from all color components. For our sample pixel, the lowest value is green at 72, so subtracting 72 from the other components gives us (30,0,34):
If there?s anything visibly recognizable with this one, it might have too much color for a B&W/gray theme. For a pure B&W image (or a color one that?s been completely desaturated), this would produce a completely black image.
Display Method: Absolute RGB error distance
Starts with the Subtract gray method, then scales the leftover color components as a percentage of the maximum error. This shows exactly which colors are pushing a pixel out of pure grayness. For our sample pixel, after subtracting gray we wound up with (30,0,34). Scaling that to a max error of 25 gives us (255,0,255), which is pure magenta and shows us that there?s much more red & blue in this pixel than green:
That?s it. Like I said, if anyone?s interested the app to play around with just let me know.
- The topic ‘Quantitative analysis of grayness’ is closed to new replies.