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Converting Between Color Spaces

The document provides a guide on converting images between different color spaces, including RGB, HSV, YCbCr, and L*a*b*. It includes code snippets for importing an image, converting it to alternative color spaces, examining matrix values, and displaying the converted images. The importance of converting back to RGB for proper display is emphasized, along with the differences in data types for each color space representation.

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4 views3 pages

Converting Between Color Spaces

The document provides a guide on converting images between different color spaces, including RGB, HSV, YCbCr, and L*a*b*. It includes code snippets for importing an image, converting it to alternative color spaces, examining matrix values, and displaying the converted images. The importance of converting back to RGB for proper display is emphasized, along with the differences in data types for each color space representation.

Uploaded by

megalatios123
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Converting Between Color Spaces

Now that you've been introduced to different color spaces, let's practice converting between them. This is a first
step to thresholding color images or adjusting the contrast of color images, which you will learn about later in
this course. Work through this script section by section to practice converting an image from RGB to alternative
color spaces and back to RGB.

Table of Contents
Import and display a color image..............................................................................................................................1
Convert to alternative color spaces.......................................................................................................................... 1
Examine the matrix values and data types............................................................................................................... 1
Display the converted images...................................................................................................................................2
Display the image correctly in RGB.......................................................................................................................... 2

Import and display a color image


Run this section to read in an image of an ice shelf and display it.

img = imread("1_SnowPoolsBefore_20180113_md-2048px.jpg");
imshow(img)

Convert to alternative color spaces


Uncomment the lines of code below and convert the image to alternative color spaces. Use the variable names
provided as they will be used in the rest of this script.

Convert to HSV

% hsvImg =

Convert to YCbCr

% ycbcrImg =

Convert to L*a*b*

% labImg =

Examine the matrix values and data types


The code below extracts the values at the top left hand corner of the third color plane for all four images.
Examine the results.

img(1:10,1:10,3)
hsvImg(1:10,1:10,3)
ycbcrImg(1:10,1:10,3)
labImg(1:10,1:10,3)

1
The results look completely different! Also, take a look at the workspace to see the different data types of the
matrices.

Notice how the original image and the YCbCr representation are both of type uint8, but the HSV and L*a*b*
values are of type double. This is important to remember as you perform your own color space conversions.

Display the converted images


Finally, show all the converted images just to make sure they still look the same.

imshow(hsvImg)
imshow(ycbcrImg)
imshow(labImg)

Oh no! This doesn't look right! What happened?

Display the image correctly in RGB


The imshow function only interprets images in the RGB color space. It does, however, accept matrices of
different data types, including both uint8 and double, which is why we were able to run imshow with the HSV
and L*a*b* images.

Always convert back to RGB when working with images in different color spaces before displaying them.

Uncomment the lines below to convert the images back to RGB.

Convert from HSV to RGB

% rgbImg1 =

Convert from YCbCr to RGB

% rgbImg2 =

Convert from L*a*b* to RGB

% rgbImg3 =

Display the images again.

2
imshow(rgbImg1)
imshow(rgbImg2)
imshow(rgbImg3)

That's much better! All of these images look identical to the original image. Do note that changing the images
back to RGB does not change their datatypes, so two of the three new RGB images are of type double.

Copyright 2022 The MathWorks, Inc.

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