Limit Color Count

Dear Forum,

Been struggling with ways to limit number of colors (RGB) from Image Sampler.

Possible ways I've tried are:

1. Rounding individual R,G,B values (0 to 1) to specific increments. The problem with this is that when I bring the RGB values back together with Color RGB(f), the combinations create more colors than intended.

2. Using the the RGB values as XYZ values, and using closest point. The problem with this is that I can't figure out how to get multiple averages. Easy to get one with Average component, but more than one??

Feedback appreciated..

Cheers,

Ognek

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on June 3, 2011 at 3:51pm

Hi Ognek,

the number of colours is limited already (there's only 16777216 different colours). You're clearly looking to project this RGB colour space onto a smaller set. But how do you define this set?

To compute multiple averages, you need to add all values together, then divide by the number of values. You should be able to get there with Mass Addition, List Length and Divide.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Ognek Kciroks on June 4, 2011 at 3:26am

David,

Thank you very much.

For the color thing: I'd like to limit the colors with a user input. Let's say "no more than 10 colors" means it would take all the colors from Image Sampler, and interpolate what those 10 would be based on how similar those colors are. Thats why I thought I could find multiple averages in XYZ, and use closest point tool, then convert it back to RGB.

Does this make sense?

Ognek

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on June 4, 2011 at 4:11am

Ah, I see. So you have N colours and are looking to generate a set of X different colours (where X is smaller than N) that approximate N as best as possible? This is called Color Quantization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_quantization#Algorithms) and it's not particularly easy.

I'll have a dig around GDI bitmap color palette functions, see if there's anything already available.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Ognek Kciroks on June 4, 2011 at 4:56am

Exactly.

That link you sent was cool. There was a diagram that illustrates what I was trying to do changing RGB to XYZ, finding multiple averages, closest points, and converting to RGB again. I'll try making Voronoi regions as shown in the illustration and see how that works.

Cheers David,

Ognek