The present state and the future of colour image processing

Abstract

Colour image processing, the subject of this book, is concerned with the manipulation of digital colour images on a computer, and is a branch of the wider field of digital image processing, which is itself a branch of the more general field of digital signal processing. Digital colour images occur very widely in the modern world, indeed few contemporary images are not digitally processed. All images on the Internet are in digital form; most images seen in the press have been in digital form at some point between reality and paper; and images seen on television have often been generated, processed and transmitted digitally. Images may be observed simply for the immediate information they convey, or they may be processed to extract useful information, such as the position, size or orientation of an object; or detail, such as a vehicle licence number.