Color in Computer Vision: Fundamentals and Applications

Preface

Visual information is our most natural source of information and communication. Apart from human vision, visual information plays a vital and indispensable role in society and is the nucleus of current communication frameworks such as the World Wide Web and mobile phones. With the ever-growing production, use, and exploitation of digital visual information (e.g., documents, websites, images, videos, and movies), a visual overflow will occur, and hence demands are urgent for the (automatic) understanding of visual information. Moreover, as digital visual information is nowadays available in color format, there is the irreversible necessity for the understanding of visual color information. Computer vision deals with the understanding of visual information. Although color became a central topic in various disciplines (ranging from mathematics and physics to the humanities and art) quite early on, in the field of computer vision it has emerged only recently. We take on the challenge of providing a substantial set of tools for image understanding from a color perspective. The central topic of this book is to present color theories, representation models, and computational methods that are essential for image understanding in the field of computer vision.

The idea to make this book was born when the authors were sitting on a terrace overlooking the Amstel River. The rich artistic history of Amsterdam, the river, and that sunny day gave us the inspiration for discussing the role ...