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2006.09.17 08:49 "Re: alpha in Grayscale or Palette", by Joris Van Damme
Graeme, Graeme Gill wrote: > > challenge here is to somehow involve alpha in that scheme. Is RGBA > > (20,20,20,20) closest to RGBA (20,20,100,20), or is it closest to > > RGBA (20,20,20,100)? Put more generally, you need to weigh color > > difference against alpha difference, and it's not quite clear how > > to avoid making rather arbitrary weight decisions. > > That doesn't seem that difficult. Assume the most sensitive situation > (ie., against an opaque neutral background), and compute the RGB > color that would result from that RGBA value. Convert color distance > to a more visual metric if you like (L*a*b* maybe), and apply the > usual color quantization algorithms in 4D, rather than 3D (I used to > like the variance cut that I put in xli). By applying the arbitrary weight 1, you can effectively hide the fact that you're applying arbitrary weights, and that's what you seem to be doing. As to convertion to Lab, OK, I'm all for that. So now we do indeed have a 4D space. To make my point, let's encode L, a and b as their natural float value, and alpha as a float value ranging from 0 to 1. So, you're saying the difference between L*a*b*alpha (0,0,0,1) (which is non-transparent black) and (1,0,0,1) (which is non-transparent almost-black) is equal to the difference between (0,0,0,1) (again non-transparent black) and (0,0,0,0) (which is total transparency). See, we apply weights (full transparent range is equally important as a difference of 1 in the L range). This is obvious if we pick very bad weights as we did here. So what are good weights? Full transparent range is equally important as a difference of 100 in the L range? Or is it twice as important as a difference of 100 in the L range? Why? Best regards, Joris Van Damme info@awaresystems.be http://www.awaresystems.be/ Download your free TIFF tag viewer for windows here: http://www.awaresystems.be/imaging/tiff/astifftagviewer.html