VISERE

An Image Viewing, Managing and Editing Tool

by

Digital Multi-Media Design (DMMD)

Fall 2005


c Digital Multi-Media Design (DMMD) 2005

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Table of Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 File 5
2.1 Open . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.2 Batch Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.3 Print . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.4 Screen Capture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

3 Edit 6

4 View 7
4.1 Toolbars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.1.1 Thumbnails . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.2 View Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.2.1 Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

5 Favorites 8

6 Process 9
6.1 Adaptive Threshold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
6.1.1 Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
6.2 Add Noise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6.2.1 Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6.3 Blur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6.3.1 Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6.4 Gaussian Blur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
6.4.1 Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
6.5 Charcoal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
6.6 Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
6.7 Contrast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
6.8 Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
6.9 Edge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
6.9.1 Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

iii
 6.10 Emboss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
6.10.1 Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
6.11 Gamma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
6.11.1 Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
6.12 Enhance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
6.12.1 Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
6.13 White Balance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
6.13.1 Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
6.14 Red Eye Removal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
6.14.1 Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
6.15 AQua2 Enlargement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
6.15.1 Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

7 Tools 24
7.1 Video Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
7.2 VTK Viewer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

8 Visere Plugin Support 25

Bibliography 26

iv
List of Tables

v
List of Figures

1.1 Visere 3.0 with Favorites on the left, Tools on top, Navigator and Thumbnails
on the right and Navigation on the bottom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

5.1 The Favorites toolbar undocked on the left side and the Thumbnails toolbar
undocked on the right side of Visere. The toolbar is in the upper left corner. 8

6.1 The Process toolbar and its drop-down menu docked on the left side. . . . . 9
6.2 The Adaptive Threshold process is applied using a 5×5 region with zero offset
(left) and with an offset of 20 (right). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
6.3 The value of pixels before threshold; for this example we have threshold 156.5 . 11
6.4 The value of pixels after apllying Adaptive Threshold; threshold has value
156.5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
6.5 Original image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
6.6 Image after blur with radius 2 and sigma 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
6.7 Image after Gaussian Blur, width is 6 and sigma 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
6.8 Image after applying Charcoal filter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
6.9 Langs before contrast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
6.10 Langs after contrast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
6.11 Original image with grapes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
6.12 Image’s edges, where radius was 8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
6.13 Image with grapes after Adaptive thresholding on edges . . . . . . . . . . . 18
6.14 Gray image with grapes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
6.15 Gray image with grapes after emboss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
6.16 Image before gamma process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
6.17 Image after uniform correction, gamma = 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
6.18 Image after channels correction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
6.19 Red eye removal. The image on the left is an example of the red eye problem.
The image on the right is the corrected image. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
6.20 400 % enlargement example of a JPG image using Lanczos (left) and AQua2
Enlargement (right). Notice that the right image is less jagged. . . . . . . . 23

vi
Chapter 1

Introduction

From its conception Visere’s main goal was to be an advanced image viewer. Allong the way
we realized that there are basic tasks that are difficult to separate from the viewing process.
Thus, Visere slowly morphed into an advanced image viewing, managing and editing tool.
Visere provides a multitude of viewing options, the ability to easily organize your favorite
images and a set of basic image editing functions. Among many of its features, the following
are worth mentioning:

1. The patented AQua2 Enlargement Process. The process enlarges raster images using
a patented edge directed interpolation algorithm. This produces sharper images with
less jagged edges. The algorithm is extremely efficient at enlarging faces, flowers, and
images which contain thin lines. More information can be found in Chapter 6.15.

2. The viewing speed. Visere is extremely efficient at opening images by intelligently

caching thumbnails and using efficient image format libraries, such as those provided
by GraphicsMagick [1]. Visere also provides speed options such as skipping images
when fast browsing and openning downsampled images. More information can be
found in Chapter 4.2.1.

3. The Video Manager tool. Video Manager transforms Visere into a light movie anima-
tion tool; it creates AVI , MPEG , and Windows Media movies from a series of image
frames. More information is available in Chapter 7.1.

4. The Screen Capture utility with event triggered capturing. New in Version 3.0 is the
screen capture utility that can be triggered to capture images when key words are
typed. This can be used as a parental control feature to monitor the material viewed
by children. More information avialable 2.4.

5. Favorites and Portfolios. Favorites provides quick access to your favorite image direc-
tories using a nested tree or a menu based interface, much like your favorite internet
browser. Portfolios are index files that list your favorite images and can be added to
Favorites for quick access. Portofolios also maintain viewing information, such as the
browse time from image to image. For more information see Chapter 5.

1
 2

Figure 1.1: Visere 3.0 with Favorites on the left, Tools on top, Navigator and Thumbnails
on the right and Navigation on the bottom.

6. Batch Processing. Visere provides a simple and intuitive tool for batch processing
tasks such as renaming, converting, resizing and rotating images. More information is
available in Chapter 2.2.

7. Dockable and Pinnable Toolbars. Starting with Visere 3.0 our focus has been on
improving the viewing workflow and we have completely revamped the look of our
toolbars. You now have complete control over the position, size and configuration of
your toolbars. Using keyboard shortcuts you can quickly remove and restore all your
toolbars. New in Visere 3.0 is the toolbar support for pin and unpin. Visere supports
the following toolbars: Navigation, Thumbnails, Tools, Favorites, EXIF, IPTC, RGB
Channels, Directories, Navigator, Histogram and Information. See Chapter 4.1 for
more information.

8. Resizable thumbnails. Starting with Visere 3.0 we broke the size limit on thumbnails.
You can now resize your thumbnails from 100 pixels to the full screen size. As far as we
are aware Visere is the only viewer that supports such a large dynamic range of image
sizes. Large thumbnail sizes are useful for applications such as reading, and locating
images when differences from image to image are very small. For more information see
Chapter 4.1.1.

9. Printing support with customized templates. New to Visere 3.0 is support for printing
templates that give you the ability to place your images anywhere on the printing page
and to add comments to your printed images. For more information read Chapter 2.3.
 3

10. Basic editing commands. The advantage of a good image viewer is the ability to
quickly view and also be able to make small touch-ups. Visere support the following
basic editing commands: cut, paste, crop, rotate, flip (including lossless JPG rotation
and flip), and resize. For more enhanced editing functions Visere can open an external
editor with the click of a button. More information is available in Chapter 3.

11. Over two dozen image editing processes. Besides basic editing functions Visere contains
image processes for red eye reduction, denoising, white color balancing, histogram
equalization, and many more. See Chapter 6 for more information.

12. Support for major file formats. Visere supports popular image formats such as BMP,
JPEG, JPG, PSD, DCM, PNG, PGM, PNM, PPM, TIF, JP2, animated GIF, and
HDF. Visere is built using the GraphicsMagick [1] libraries and we can easily add
support for many of over 100 file formats supported by GraphicsMagick. If you need
support for a missing file format we encourage you to contact DMMD with your file
request and we will most likely be able to add it to Visere. For more information see
Chapter 2.1.

13. 3D Visual Toolkit (VTK) Support. Starting with version 2.41 Visere added support for
3D VTK file formats [2]. If you need support for 3D VTK file formats please contact
DMMD. See Chapter 7.2 for more information.

14. Plugin support. New to Visere 3.0 is support for plugins. You can now easily develop
your own image processing filters that will integrate directly into Visere’s Process. For
more information see Chapter 8.

15. Windows API Programming. Finally, Visere is written entirely using the Windows API
interface without making use of Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) or Microsoft’s
.NET framework. This makes Visere very fast and it gives us the ability to easily port
Visere to Linux or Mac OS. To request support for other operating systems please
contact DMMD.

Visere is a freeware/shareware program. During the first thirty days all of Visere’s features
are available for free. After thirty days a registration code is required to take advantage of
the following features:

1. Running the white color balancing, red eye removal and AQua2 Enlargement image
processes.

2. Toolbars pin and unpin feature.

3. Printing more than one picture at a time.

4. The histogram and information toolbar.

5. The Video Manager.

1
Version 2.4 was a limited release in December 2004.
 4

6. Resizable Thumbnails.

7. Password protected and event driven screen captures.

DMMD uses your registration funds to further develop and enhance Visere into the product
that consumers like you desire. We understand that not all users of Visere can afford the
registration fee and therefore DMMD will gladly provide you a free registration code if
you become an active beta tester or you email DMMD (support@dmmd.net) the following
information:

1. An explanation as to why you cannot afford the registration fee.

2. A short paragraph (at least 100 words) that describes why Visere is a great tool for
you and why you need the features available in the registered version.

3. A statement on whether or not DMMD can use your comments for marketing purposes.

Finally, our Visere team would like to thank you for all your support and we are eager to
hear your feedback. You can contact us via email by writing to visere@dmmd.net.
Chapter 2

File

2.1 Open
Visere supports popular image formats such as BMP, JPEG, JPG, PSD, DCM, PNG, PGM,
PNM, PPM, TIF, JP2, animated GIF, and HDF. Visere is built using the GraphicsMagick
[] libraries and we can easily add support for many of over 100 file formats supported by
GraphicsMagick. If you need support for a missing file format we encourage you to contact
DMMD with your file request and we will most likely be able to add it to Visere.

2.2 Batch Processing

Visere provides a simple and intuitive too for batch processing tasks such as renaming,
converting, resizing and rotating images.

2.3 Print
New to Visere 3.0 is support for printing templates that give you the ability to place your
images anywhere on the printing page and to add comments to your printed images.

2.4 Screen Capture

New in Version 3.0 is the screen capture utility that can be triggered to capture images
when key words are typed. This can be used as a parental control feature by monitoring the
material viewed by children.

5
Chapter 3

Edit

The advantage of a good image viewer is the ability to quickly view and also be able to make
small touch-ups. Visere support the following basic editing commands: cut, paste, crop,
rotate, flip (including lossless JPG rotation and flip), and resize. For more enhanced editing
functions Visere can open an external editor with the click of a button.

6
Chapter 4

View

4.1 Toolbars
Starting with Visere 3.0 our focus has been on improving the viewing workflow and we have
completely revamped the look of our toolbars. You now have complete control over the
position, size and configuration of your toolbars. Using keyboard shortcuts you can quickly
remove and restore all your toolbars.

4.1.1 Thumbnails
Starting with Visere 3.0 we broke the size limit on thumbnails. You can now resize your
thumbnails from 100 pixels to the full screen size. As far as we are aware Visere is the
only viewer (in the Fall of 2005) that supports such a large dynamic range of image sizes.
Large thumbnail sizes are useful for applications such as reading, and locating images when
differences from image to image are very small.

4.2 View Options

Visere is extremely efficient at opening images by intelligently caching1 thumbnails and using
efficient image format libraries, such as those provided by GraphicsMagick [1].

4.2.1 Performance
From the menu option View \ View Options \ Performance Visere can be configured to skip
images when fast viewing or to open up

1
When caching large directories Visere caches only images that are about to be viewed. This in turn does
not slow your computer by building caches for thousands of images that may not be viewed.

7
Chapter 5

Favorites

Figure 5.1: The Favorites toolbar undocked on the left side and the Thumbnails toolbar
undocked on the right side of Visere. The toolbar is in the upper left corner.

Favorites provides quick access to your favorite image directories using a nested tree or a
menu based interface, much like your internet browser. With Favorites, image directories
behave like website links. To provide an additional level of accessability Visere provides
Portfolios which are index files where you can keep dedicated lists of files. For example you
can creat Portfolios of your favorite vacation, of images you want to print, images you want
to email, or images that you want to assign to any one particular task.

8
Chapter 6

Process

Figure 6.1: The Process toolbar and its drop-down menu docked on the left side.

Visere is built using the GraphicsMagick library [1]. In addition to its support for different file
formats Visere also takes advantage of the many GraphicsMagick image processes. Starting
with Visere 3.0 we are also starting to add DMMD’s own image processing algorithms, such
as: red eye reduction, denoising, white color balancing, image resizing, and many more.
While other software packages refer to different algorithms as filters, we decided that
Process is a more appropriate term for algorithms that manipulate image data. The Process
toolbar, which provides access to some of the image processing algorithms, is started by
clicking on the Process or V iew \ T oolbars \ P rocess.
Select the process you want to apply to the currently opened image by clicking on it from

9
 10

Figure 6.2: The Adaptive Threshold process is applied using a 5 × 5 region with zero offset
(left) and with an offset of 20 (right).

the drop-down menu on top of the Process toolbar. The Preview button applies the selected
process to the opened image. While the image is being processed you can press the Cancel
button to stop the process. After the process completes click on Save As to save the changes
to a file. You can also apply a second process by simply selecting a second process. Details
on some of the available processes are described next.

6.1 Adaptive Threshold

Thresholding is the process of turning pixels on (i.e. maximum level) if the pixel value is
larger than some threshold and off (i.e. a value of zero) otherwise. The Adaptive Threshold
process is useful if the ideal threshold level is not known in advance, or if the illumination
gradient is not constant across the image.

6.1.1 Usage
Adaptive thresholding works by evaluating the mean (average) of a pixel region (size specified
by width and height) and using the mean as the thresholding value. In order to remove
residual noise from the background, the threshold may be adjusted by subtracting a constant
offset (default zero) from the mean to compute the threshold. The results of different offset
values applied to an image are shown in Fig. 6.2. This function is design to highlight objects
that are uniform in size. Here bellow, in Fig. 6.3 and Fig. 6.4 we present an example of
transforming the value of pixels when we apply Adaptive Threshold.It eliminates pixel values
which are not representative of their surroundings.
 11

250

200

150
Y

100

50

0
0 50 100 150 200 250
X

Figure 6.3: The value of pixels before threshold; for this example we have threshold 156.5 .

250

200

150
Y

100

50

0
0 50 100 150 200 250
X

Figure 6.4: The value of pixels after apllying Adaptive Threshold; threshold has value 156.5
.
 12

6.2 Add Noise

Add Noisejust add a selected noise to an image. In digital imaging, noise refers to a coarse,
pointillist pattern that is applied to create a graphic feel in an image. Noise is often used
when an image is blurry. Sometimes, the difference in the amount of random color variation
in the two images can stand out, don’t allow the images from mingling together smoothly. In
such a case, you can add noise to images to create the illusion that both images come from
the same source. Also you can add noise for artistic reason to simulate an old photograph, a
static image on a television screen, or just think that you add ’color snow’ to your image. . .

6.2.1 Usage
Only you have to do to add noise is:

1. Select the image.

2. From Menu Process select Add Noise and choose what kind of noise you want: Gaussian
noise, Multiplicative Gaussian noise, Impulse noise, Laplacian noise, Poisson noise,
then select the Aplly oprion to see the new image.

NOTE: Applying a filter is not destructiv; that is, it ca be undone choossing the Undo
option. Only if you choose the Save As button you will save the modified image.

6.3 Blur
Blurcreates a softened effect as you enter values for radius and sigma. It reduces higher
frequency details from image, lacks the fine details. The blurring prevents users from clearly
identifying streaklines or other isolated visual paterns, giving a diffuse glow to image. To
see an example of how is working the blur filter, look at the original image in figure 6.5, and
the result after we apply the blur filter is in figure 6.6

6.3.1 Usage
The Blur filter has multiple applications. Use Blur to soften images or to softly haze back-
grounds. Blur filters can be used to vignette images. Blur can also create the appearence of
sudden movement. To blur image you must do:

1. Select a number for radius, between 0.1 and 10. The radius parameter specifies the
radius of the Gaussian, in pixels, not counting the center pixel.

2. The Sigma parameter specifies the standard deviation of the Laplacian, in pixels. Select
sigma between 0.1 and 5, and select Apply option to see the effect.
 13

Figure 6.5: Original image

Figure 6.6: Image after blur with radius 2 and sigma 1

 14

Figure 6.7: Image after Gaussian Blur, width is 6 and sigma 4

6.4 Gaussian Blur

Gaussian Blur is a general purpose blur filter. This removes fine image detail and noise
leaving only larger scale changes. Gaussian Blur produce a very pure smoothing effect
without side effects. A Gaussian Blur is distinct from other blurs in that it has a well
defined effect on different levels of detail within an image. As the level of detail becomes
smaller the filter lets throught less and less. This filter adds low-frequency detail and can
produce a hazy effect.

6.4.1 Usage
The Gaussian Blur process take two parameters: Width and Sigma.

1. Width refers to the radius of kernel size, not counting the center pixel. For example,
a width of one gives a (standard) 3x3 convolution mask. Larger windows require more
processing but can achieve higher levels of blurring.

2. Sigma controls the standard deviation of the Gaussian bell curve, in pixels. It controls
the relative weights or effect the surrounding pixels have on final pixels. Smaller sigma
results in more weight on the center pixel and results in less blurring, larger sigma
causes less weight on the center pixel and causes more blurring.

6.5 Charcoal
This process is a charcoal drawing image effect filter, image looks like charcoal. It redraws
an image to create a smudge effect.

6.6 Usage
To use charcoal is need to select a radius and a sigma:
 15

Figure 6.8: Image after applying Charcoal filter

1. The Radius parameter specifies the radius of the Gaussian, in pixels, not counting the
center pixel. The values are from 0.1 to 10.

2. The Sigma parameter specifies the standard deviation of the Laplacian, in pixels. The
vaues are from 0.1 to 5.

Hereinafter we present an example in figure 6.8 where radius is 8 and sigma 1.

6.7 Contrast
Contrast image (enhance intensity difference in image). Adding contrast to an image will
improve the highlight and shadow areas of image and give it some snap. This may be
necessary to obtain a decent print, because prints on paper do not have as much dynamic
range as a monitor; if you do not control the contrast, detail in the highlights may blow out
and detail in the shadows can block up and become muddy or even black. Contrast has a
big effect of color, higher contrast makes color much more saturated and rich. Adjusting the
contrast makes the image more flat or more ’punchy’.

6.8 Usage
Selectin a number between 0 and 100 you can modify the image contrast. Next pictures
show langs before contrast and after we aplly contrast for 4 times, choosing Sharpen 100.

6.9 Edge
Edge detection is a problem of fundamental importance in image analysis. In typical images,
edges characterize object bounderies and are therefore useful for segmentation, registration,
and identification of objects in a scene. An edge is a jump in intensity. Edge highlight edges
in image, identifies the area with significant transitions and outlines the edges. The pixels
from the edges are set to the maximum level and the rest(i.e. background) are set to black.
 16

Figure 6.9: Langs before contrast

Figure 6.10: Langs after contrast

 17

Figure 6.11: Original image with grapes.

Figure 6.12: Image’s edges, where radius was 8.

6.9.1 Usage
The argument for this filter is radius which is the radius of the pixel neighborhood. Specify
a radius of zero for automatic radius selection.
Note: Using Edge and Adaptive Threshold we can obtain thin edges, like in figure 6.13

6.10 Emboss
Emboss image (highlight edges with 3D effect). Embossing is an edge detector filter.The
algorithm convolves the image with a Gaussian operator of the given raius and standard
deviation (sigma). For reasonable results radius is larger than sigma. Use a radius of 0 and
Emboss selects a suitable radius for you. This filter gives a better 3D shadow effect to the
image. The result is very useful for a bumpmap of the image. It creates the appearence of
raised relief on surfaces. It is particularly useful for examining macro images of surfaces for
defects or forensic evidence. For example, a paper company might use this to look for rips
or tears in a roll of paper as the ’sheet’ is rolled or unrolled.
 18

Figure 6.13: Image with grapes after Adaptive thresholding on edges

Figure 6.14: Gray image with grapes.

6.10.1 Usage
To use emboss is need to select radius and sigma. We present an example in figure 6.15,
where radius was 2 and sigma 1. The original image is presented in figure 6.14.

1. Select radius parameter between 0.1 and 10. The radius parameter is the radius of the
pixel neighborhood. Specify a radius of zero for automatic radius selection.

2. Select sigma between 0.1 and 5.

6.11 Gamma
Gamma correction was developed to make it easier to adjust colours displayed on Cathode
Ray Tube (CRT) displays. CRT displays produce a light intensity (luminance) proportional
to the input voltage raised to a power. Since no two CRTs are exactly alike in their lumi-
nance characteristic, a way of adjusting the input image so the displayed colours match a
reference is needed. This is done by adjusting the colours to be displayed by a power which
is termed gamma. Gamma correction matters if you have any interest in displaying an image
 19

Figure 6.15: Gray image with grapes after emboss

Figure 6.16: Image before gamma process.

accurately on a computer screen. It controls the overall brightness (and color saturation)
and/or contrast in color on an image. Images which are not properly corrected can look
either bleached out, ot too dark. This is typically done in order to prepare the image for
display or printing on a particular device.

6.11.1 Usage
There are two ways to apply gamma correction:
To examplificate this process, we have picture 6.16

1. Select Uniform correction : gamma will be the same for red, green and blue channels.
In our example gamma is 2, and the result is in figure 6.17.

2. Select Channels correction : each of red, green and blue channels will have its own
gamma. For this case, we choose gamma for red channel to be 1, gamma for green
channel to be 2 and gamma for blue channel to be 3. The result is presented in figure
??
 20

Figure 6.17: Image after uniform correction, gamma = 2

Figure 6.18: Image after channels correction.

 21

6.12 Enhance
Enhance is a non-linear noise reduction process. It works well on digital images taken in low
light and it is good at maintaining and even enhancing strong local edges. Texture details
tend to be removed together with noise. The Enhance process should also be applied before
AQua2 Enlargement 6.15 is used to enlarge an image, especially if the image is noisy or has
high compression artifacts.

6.12.1 Usage
The Enhance process does not take any parameters. You can apply the algorithm multiple
times to obtain a more denoised and less textured image. Image enhacement operator im-
prove the detectability of important image details or objects by man or machine. Example
operations include noise reduction, smoothing, contrast stretching, and edge enhacement. It
performs necessary corrections. In most cases this function works very well on images from
scanner or from digital cameras. Images become more life-like, improving the quality of a
noisy image.

6.13 White Balance

The idea behind white balancing is simple. Due to different lighting conditions objects that
are supposed to be white1 (or gray if you discard luminance) can appear non-white (or
colored) when a picture is taken. White balancing is the process that maps the non-white
color back to a white color2 . In order to correct for the white balance the user must specify
the color in the scene that is supposed to appear white. The white color in the scene can be
specified using the RGB coordinates or color temperatures3 .
An interesting experiment to try out is to find portraits where the teeth are visible and
to select the color of the teeth as the white point in the scene. Applying the White Balance
process will make the teeth look more whiter (or gray). This can have impressive results on
some images.

6.13.1 Usage
There are two options for selecting the white point in the scene:

1. Click on the White Point radio button and then select an RGB color or choose the
color picker to select the point from the image.

2. Specify the color temperature. The higher the temperature the more red the image
will appear and the lower the temperature the bluer the image will appear.
1
The target white point chromaticity coordinates used by Visere are x = 0.3127, y = 0.3290 for D65 and
x = 0.3457, y = 0.3585 for D50 .
2
White color assuming the standard luminant D65 or D50 .
3
For more information on color temperatures see [3, 4, 5].
 22

Figure 6.19: Red eye removal. The image on the left is an example of the red eye problem.
The image on the right is the corrected image.

6.14 Red Eye Removal

Red eyes occur when flash is used in conjunction with a dilated pupil, which usually happens
in night pictures. Due to the dilated pupils the light from the flash hits the back of the eye,
which contains a lot of blood vessels, and reflects back into the camera. There are two
standard approaches for preventing red eyes when the picture is taken. First, you can mount
your flash high above the camera lens such that the reflected light will bounce away from the
camera lens. This is the best and only true solution to preventing red eye. A second, cheaper
and lower quality alternative is to force the pupil to shrink before the picture is taken. The
red eye prevention feature in some cameras consists of several bright pre-flashes that are
supposed to make the eye pupils contract before the actual shot. For digital cameras, the
third and final solution is to use digital image post pro cessing to eliminate the red eyes. An
example of Visere’s Red Eye process is shown in Fig. 6.19.

6.14.1 Usage
To use the Red Eye process choose the Select tool from T ools \ Select and select the red eye.
If the selected region is too big with respect to the red eye, you may get some red removal
outside the actual eye. In this case select a smaller region, or zoom into the eye first and
then select the red eye region.

6.15 AQua2 Enlargement

The patented AQua2 Enlargement increases the size of raster images using edge directed
interpolation. This produces sharper images with less jagged edges. The algorithm is ex-
tremely efficient at enlarging faces, flowers, and images that contain thin lines. The algorithm
also tends to produce more naturally looking images that have volume as compared to other
advanced interpolation algorithms [6, 7] which tend to produce flater, cartoon like images.
An example4 image interpolated with Lanczos and AQua2 Enlargement is shown in Fig.
6.20.
4
Note that the differences in the printed ve rsion may not be as obvious as the printer most likely
introduces its own interpolation.
 23

Figure 6.20: 400 % enlargement example of a JPG image using Lanczos (left) and AQua2
Enlargement (right). Notice that the right image is less jagged.

An artifact of the AQua2 Enlargement is that noisy images tend to generate artificial
edges because the algorithm treats all pixels as potential edges. It is recommended that
before running the AQua2 Enlargement algorithm you first denoise your image using the
Enhance algorithm from Chapter 6.12.

6.15.1 Usage
To run AQ ua2 Enlargement specify the percentage of size increase for the width and height
of the image. Checking the Constrain Proportions check-box maintains the original aspect
ratio. AQua2 Enlargement cannot be used for making the image smaller than the original
size. Use the resize algorithms available in Edit \ Resize Image to shrink the image size.
Chapter 7

Tools

7.1 Video Manager

Video Manager transforms Visere into a light movie animation tool; it creates AVI, MPEG,
and WindowsMedia movies from a series of image frames.

7.2 VTK Viewer

Starting with version 2.41 Visere added support for 3D VTK file formats [2].

1
Version 2.4 was a limited release in December 2004.

24
Chapter 8

Visere Plugin Support

New to Visere 3.0 is support for plugins. You can now easily develop your own image
processing filters that will integrate directly into Visere’s Process.

25
Bibliography

[1] (2005) GraphicsMagick. [Online]. Available: http://www.graphicsmagick.org/

[2] (2005) Visual toolkit (vtk). [Online]. Available: http://www.vtk.org/

[3] R. S. Berns, Principles of Color Technology. Whiley Interscience, 2000.

[4] E. J. Giorgianni and T. E. Madden, Digital Color Management. Addison Wesley, 1998.

[5] G. Wyszecki and W. S. Stiles, Color Science. Whiley Interscience, 1982.

[6] (2005) Altamira group. [Online]. Available: http://www.altamira-group.com/

[7] (2005) Shortcut. [Online]. Available: http://www.trulyphotomagic.com/

26
Index

adaptive threshold, 10 MPEG, 1

add noise, 12
AVI, 1 noise reduction, 21

batch processing, 2 parental control, 1

blur, 12 paste, 3
plugin, 3
charcoal, 14 Portfolios, 1
color preview, 10
balancing, 3, 9 print, 2
contrast, 15 templates, 2
crop, 3 process, 9
cut, 3
red eye, 3, 9, 22
denoise, 3, 9 rotate, 3
lossless JPG, 3
edge, 15
edit, 3 save as, 10
process, 3 screen capture, 1
emboss, 17 shareware, 3
enlargement
AQua2, 1, 22 thumbnails, 1, 2
Lanczos, 22 toolbars
dockable, 2
Favorites, 1 pin and unpin, 2
file formats
vtk, 3, 24 Video Manager, 1
flip, 3 viewing speed, 1
lossless JPG, 3 white balance, 21
freware, 3 white color balancing, 3, 9
gamma, 18 white point, 21
gaussian blur, 14 Windows Media, 1

histogram
equalization, 3, 9

image formats, 3, 5
interpolation, 22

27