Feature Extraction and Image Processing for Computer Vision, 4th Edition

11.5. Luminance and chrominance colour models

The RGB colour models define base colours according to practical physical properties of reproduction systems. Thus, the brightness of each colour depends on all components. However, in some applications, like video transmission, it is more convenient to have a separate single component to represent the perceived brightness. From a historical perspective, perhaps the most relevant models that use a component to represent brightness are the YUV and YIQ. It is important to mention that sometimes the term YUV is used to denote any colour model that uses luminance and chrominance in different components; the Y component is called the luma and the remaining two components are referred to as the chrominance ...