4802-1-2: Human Vision and Imaging

Weblinks gathered by Dr. Chris Taylor

Summary

This lecture focused on two major topics: Human Vision and Color Spaces.

Human Vision

Many image processing applications involve a human observing the result. Knowledge of the human visual system can help image processing developers design techniques that will exploit certain characteristics of the visual system. The following links provide information on the human visual system:

• http://www.cis.rit.edu/mcsl/faq/faq1.shtml describes visual perception (even though it claims to be a color FAQ. [5]
• http://www.eyenet.org/public/anatomy/anatomy.html describes the anatomy of the eye. [2]
• http://www.driesen.com/human_vision_system.htm provides a figure of the visual pathway in the brain. [1]
• http://www.adobe.com/support/techguides/color/colortheory/vision.html describes the physiology of sight [4]
• http://www.hhmi.org/senses/b/b110.htm provides lots of details on how humans perceive color. [5]
• http://ligwww.epfl.ch/~fua/vision/3/misc/exam/human/2/ discusses human vision in relation to computer imaging. [3]

Color Spaces

Digital images are composed of three color planes. Monitors use red, green, and blue primaries to produce colors. As a result, the RGB color space is the most logical space in which to store image data. Unfortunately, the RGB color space is, generally speaking, not a good space in which to perform image processing tasks. There are a number of other color spaces that are better suited for different tasks. The following links provide information on a number of color spaces:

• http://devworld.apple.com/techpubs/mac/ACI/ACI-48.html does a very good job of describing many important color spaces. [4]
• http://www.cecs.csulb.edu/~jewett/colors/index.html does a nice job of describing RGB, CMYK, and HSI color spaces. [3]
• http://www.cac.psu.edu/dept/cac/publications/web/publications/cacguide/viz/sem_notes/color_2d/ is a seminar on color. [5]
• http://www.inforamp.net/~poynton/ColorFAQ.html does not have a lot of pretty pictures, but does a thorough job of describing the important color spaces. [5]
• http://graphics.lcs.mit.edu/~mcmillan/comp136/Lecture4/Color.html covers the eye, color, color matching, etc. [4]
• http://www.linocolor.com/colorman/colorman.htm has a lot of information and some nice figures describing the CIE Lab color space. Although we did not talk about this color space in class, it is noteworthy because it is approximately perceptually uniform. [3]
• http://www.cis.rit.edu/mcsl/ gets you to the Color Science Lab at RIT. They've got lots of links (many of them broken) to color demonstrations. [5]

A rating appears after each link (in square brackets). The rating indicates the level of content provided by the link. A rating of [1] indicates very little content while a rating of [5] indicates a plethora of content is provided.