ColorDistance

ColorDistance[c1,c2]

gives the approximate perceptual distance between color directives c1 and c2.

ColorDistance[list,c]

gives color distances between elements of list and c.

ColorDistance[list1,list2]

gives color distances between corresponding elements of list1 and list2.

ColorDistance[image,c]

gives an image whose pixel values are color distance between pixels in image and the color c.

ColorDistance[image1,image2]

yields an image giving the pixelwise color distance between image1 and image2.

Details and Options

  • Color distance, also known as color difference, gives a measure of visual, perceptual color differences. Perceptually similar colors have smaller distance.
  • ColorDistance computes the distance between two colors as the Euclidean distance between the two color vectors in the LABColor space.
  • In the computation of the color distance, the alpha channel is ignored.
  • ColorDistance works with arbitrary 2D and 3D images.
  • With ColorDistance[image,], color distances are returned as an image of a real type with the same dimensions as image.
  • With ColorDistance[image1,image2], image1 and image2 are center aligned, and an image of color distances for the overlapping pixels is returned.
  • ColorDistance supports a DistanceFunction option. The following settings are available:
  • "CIE76"Euclidean distance in LABColor (default)
    "CIE94"color difference defined in LCHColor
    "CIE2000"CIE94 with some corrections
    {"CMC",{l,c}}Color Measurement Committee metric with lightness l and chroma c
    "DeltaL"luminance difference in LCHColor
    "DeltaC"chroma difference in LCHColor
    "DeltaH"hue-based difference in LCHColor
    ffunction f that is given two lists of Lab values
  • With the "CMC" metric, commonly used parameters are for perceptibility and for acceptability. If not specified, is used.

Examples

open allclose all

Basic Examples  (2)

Distance between two colors:

Distance between a color and each pixel of an image:

Scope  (5)

Distance between colors defined in different color spaces:

Distance between each element of a color array and a color:

Distance between color arrays:

Color distance between two images:

Color distance between the central regions of images with different dimensions:

Options  (8)

DistanceFunction  (8)

By default, "CIE76" (also spelled ΔEa*b*) is used:

This corresponds to EuclideanDistance for LABColor components:

Visualize the "CIE76" color distance in the "LAB" space:

Use "CIE94" measure for computing the color distance (also spelled ΔE94):

Note that this measure is not symmetric:

Use "CIE2000" measure for computing the color distance (also spelled "CIEDE2000" or ΔE00):

Note that this measure is symmetric:

Use "CMC" color distance:

Use "DeltaL" color distance:

Distance between L* channels visualized in the "LAB" space:

Use "DeltaC" color distance:

Distance between two color chromas, each being computed as Norm[{a^*,b^*}]:

Use "DeltaH" color distance:

Use a custom distance function that is only based on the luminance:

Applications  (6)

Highlight details in an image using a selective desaturation:

Segment components of specific colors in an image:

Detect motion by comparing two images:

This image has a strong red color cast:

The default distance considers differences in hue, luminance, and chroma:

Use DistanceFunction"DeltaH" to measure only the differences in hue:

Cluster a list of colors based on their distance:

Sort a list of colors using their perceptual distance from a reference color:

Compare to sorting based on RGB values:

Properties & Relations  (8)

ColorDistance is equivalent to EuclideanDistance of the color in the LABColor space:

The distance between a color and itself is always zero:

The distance between a color represented in two color spaces is zero:

Notice that this distance may be nonzero if the color is not available in the new color space:

The alpha channel is not used when computing the distance:

For RGB colors, the typical range of distances for each method is as follows:

Define a sample set using the boundary of the RGB cube:

Compute all pairwise distances between the sample colors:

Compute the range:

Not all the color distances are metrics in a mathematical sense:

"CIE76"
"CIE94"
"CIE2000"
"CMC"
"DeltaL"
"DeltaC"
"DeltaH"
"non-negativity"
"coincidence axiom"
"-"
"-"
"-"
"symmetry"
"-"
"-"
"triangle inequality"
"-"
"-"
"-"
"-"

"CIE94" and "CMC" are not symmetric:

"CIE94", "CIE2000", "CMC", and "DeltaH" do not always satisfy the triangle inequality:

Simulated frequencies of satisfying the triangular inequality depend on the specified distance:

"CIE2000" is one of the latest standards, introducing many improvements over the simple Lab distance. It is perceptually more accurate compared to "CIE76" and "CIE94":

Show constant-distance curves on the plane for a fixed lightness, :

However, "CIE2000" is computationally more expensive compared to the older metrics:

ImageDistance by default computes the Euclidean distance between two images in the RGB space:

ColorDistance by default computes the Euclidean distance between two pixels in the LAB space:

ColorDistance returns the distance between the central regions of images with different dimensions:

The distance between two images may be identically zero if their overlapping regions coincide:

Neat Examples  (1)

Colorize an image using distance maps from three primary colors:

Wolfram Research (2014), ColorDistance, Wolfram Language function, https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/ColorDistance.html (updated 2015).

Text

Wolfram Research (2014), ColorDistance, Wolfram Language function, https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/ColorDistance.html (updated 2015).

CMS

Wolfram Language. 2014. "ColorDistance." Wolfram Language & System Documentation Center. Wolfram Research. Last Modified 2015. https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/ColorDistance.html.

APA

Wolfram Language. (2014). ColorDistance. Wolfram Language & System Documentation Center. Retrieved from https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/ColorDistance.html

BibTeX

@misc{reference.wolfram_2023_colordistance, author="Wolfram Research", title="{ColorDistance}", year="2015", howpublished="\url{https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/ColorDistance.html}", note=[Accessed: 19-March-2024 ]}

BibLaTeX

@online{reference.wolfram_2023_colordistance, organization={Wolfram Research}, title={ColorDistance}, year={2015}, url={https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/ColorDistance.html}, note=[Accessed: 19-March-2024 ]}