COLOR IMAGES

Abstract

The goal of this article is to present specific capabilities and limitations of the use of color digital images in a characterization process. The whole process is investigated, from the acquisition of digital color images to the analysis of the information relevant to various applications in the field of material characterization. A digital color image can be considered as a matrix of pixels with values expressed in a vector-space (commonly 3 dimensional space) whose specificity, compared to grey-scale images, is to ensure a coding and a representation of the output image (visualisation printing) that fits the human visual reality. In a characterization process, it is interesting to regard color image attnbutes as a set of visual aspect measurements on a material surface. Color measurement systems (spectrocolorimeters, colorimeters and radiometers) and cameras use the same type of light detectors: most of them use Charge Coupled Devices sensors. The difference between the two types of color data acquisition systems is that color measurement systems provide a global information of the observed surface (average aspect of the surface): the color texture is not taken into account. Thus, it seems interesting to use imaging systems as measuring instruments for the quantitative characterization of the color texture.