Converting Between Device-Dependent Color Spaces :: Color (Image Processing Toolbox User's Guide)

Image Processing Toolbox User's Guide

Converting Between Device-Dependent Color Spaces

The toolbox includes functions that you can use to convert RGB data to several common device-dependent color spaces, and vice versa:

YIQ
YCbCr
Hue, saturation, value (HSV)

YIQ Color Space

The National Television Systems Committee (NTSC) defines a color space known as YIQ. This color space is used in televisions in the United States. One of the main advantages of this format is that grayscale information is separated from color data, so the same signal can be used for both color and black and white sets.

In the NTSC color space, image data consists of three components: luminance (Y), hue (I), and saturation (Q). The first component, luminance, represents grayscale information, while the last two components make up chrominance (color information).

The function rgb2ntsc converts colormaps or RGB images to the NTSC color space. ntsc2rgb performs the reverse operation.

For example, these commands convert an RGB image to NTSC format.

RGB = imread('peppers.png');
YIQ = rgb2ntsc(RGB);

Because luminance is one of the components of the NTSC format, the RGB to NTSC conversion is also useful for isolating the gray level information in an image. In fact, the toolbox functions rgb2gray and ind2gray use the rgb2ntsc function to extract the grayscale information from a color image.

For example, these commands are equivalent to calling rgb2gray.

```
YIQ = rgb2ntsc(RGB);
I = YIQ(:,:,1);
```

Note In the YIQ color space, I is one of the two color components, not the grayscale component.

YCbCr Color Space

The YCbCr color space is widely used for digital video. In this format, luminance information is stored as a single component (Y), and chrominance information is stored as two color-difference components (Cb and Cr). Cb represents the difference between the blue component and a reference value. Cr represents the difference between the red component and a reference value. (YUV, another color space widely used for digital video, is very similar to YCbCr but not identical.)

YCbCr data can be double precision, but the color space is particularly well suited to uint8 data. For uint8 images, the data range for Y is [16, 235], and the range for Cb and Cr is [16, 240]. YCbCr leaves room at the top and bottom of the full uint8 range so that additional (nonimage) information can be included in a video stream.

The function rgb2ycbcr converts colormaps or RGB images to the YCbCr color space. ycbcr2rgb performs the reverse operation.

For example, these commands convert an RGB image to YCbCr format.

RGB = imread('peppers.png');
YCBCR = rgb2ycbcr(RGB);

HSV Color Space

The HSV color space (hue, saturation, value) is often used by people who are selecting colors (e.g., of paints or inks) from a color wheel or palette, because it corresponds better to how people experience color than the RGB color space does. The functions rgb2hsv and hsv2rgb convert images between the RGB and HSV color spaces.

As hue varies from 0 to 1.0, the corresponding colors vary from red through yellow, green, cyan, blue, magenta, and back to red, so that there are actually red values both at 0 and 1.0. As saturation varies from 0 to 1.0, the corresponding colors (hues) vary from unsaturated (shades of gray) to fully saturated (no white component). As value, or brightness, varies from 0 to 1.0, the corresponding colors become increasingly brighter.

The following figure illustrates the HSV color space.

Illustration of the HSV Color Space

The rgb2hsv function converts colormaps or RGB images to the HSV color space. hsv2rgb performs the reverse operation. These commands convert an RGB image to the HSV color space.

RGB = imread('peppers.png');
HSV = rgb2hsv(RGB);

For closer inspection of the HSV color space, the next block of code displays the separate color planes (hue, saturation, and value) of an HSV image.

RGB=reshape(ones(64,1)*reshape(jet(64),1,192),[64,64,3]);
HSV=rgb2hsv(RGB);
H=HSV(:,:,1);
S=HSV(:,:,2);
V=HSV(:,:,3);
imshow(H)
figure, imshow(S);
figure, imshow(V);
figure, imshow(RGB);

The Separated Color Planes of an HSV Image

As the hue plane image in the preceding figure illustrates, hue values make a linear transition from high to low. If you compare the hue plane image against the original image, you can see that shades of deep blue have the highest values, and shades of deep red have the lowest values. (As stated previously, there are values of red on both ends of the hue scale. To avoid confusion, the sample image uses only the red values from the beginning of the hue range.)

Saturation can be thought of as the purity of a color. As the saturation plane image shows, the colors with the highest saturation have the highest values and are represented as white. In the center of the saturation image, notice the various shades of gray. These correspond to a mixture of colors; the cyans, greens, and yellow shades are mixtures of true colors. Value is roughly equivalent to brightness, and you will notice that the brightest areas of the value plane correspond to the brightest colors in the original image.

Performing Profile-Based Conversions Neighborhood and Block Operations