1. Introduction to image processing - Hubble （1。）.pdf

1 1. Introduction to image processing 1.1 What is an image? An image is an array, or a matrix, of square pixels (picture elements) arranged in columns and rows. Figure 1: An image — an array or a matrix of pixels arranged in columns and rows. In a (8-bit) greyscale image each picture element has an assigned intensity that ranges from 0 to 255. A grey scale image is what people normally call a black and white image, but the name emphasizes that such an image will also include many shades of grey. Figure 2: Each pixel has a value from 0 (black) to 255 (white). The possible range of the pixel values depend on the colour depth of the image, here 8 bit = 256 tones or greyscales. A normal greyscale image has 8 bit colour depth = 256 greyscales. A “true colour” image has 24 bit colour depth = 8 x 8 x 8 bits = 256 x 256 x 256 colours = ~16 million colours. 2 Figure 3: A true-colour image assembled from three greyscale images coloured red, green and blue. Such an image may contain up to 16 million different colours. Some greyscale images have more greyscales, for instance 16 bit = 65536 greyscales. In principle three greyscale images can be combined to form an image with 281,474,976,710,656 greyscales. There are two general groups of ‘images’: vector graphics (or line art) and bitmaps (pixel-based or ‘images’). Some of the most common file formats are: GIF — an 8-bit (256 colour), non-destructively compressed bitmap format. Mostly used for web. Has several sub-standards one of which is the animated GIF.