Method for modulating color for effecting color cell texture
AssigneeGeneral Electric Company
InventorsJimmy E. Chandler, Richard G. Fadden
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A full color real time cell texture generator uses a tapered quantization scheme for establishing a small set of colors representative of all colors of a source image. A source image to be displayed is quantitized by selecting the color of the small set nearest the color of the source image for each cell of the source image. Nearness is measured as Euclidian distance in a three-space coordinate system of the primary colors: red, green and blue. In a specific embodiment, an 8-bit modulation code is used to control each of the red, green, blue and translucency content of each display pixel, thereby permitting independent modulation for each of the colors forming the display image.
Claims12
In a visual image generating system for generating visual images from stored data by color intensity control of pixels forming an image, the visual images being formed from a plurality of cells corresponding to predetermined portions of a source image, each cell having a center and each source image having a predetermined number of actual colors, a method for color modulating pixels for cell texturing, comprising:
- assigning a color quantum from a preidentified set of color quanta having a predetermined number of quanta to each one of the plurality of cells, wherein the set of color quanta is representative of the number of actual colors of the source image and further wherein the color quantum assigned to a cell is the color quantum from the set of color quanta representing the color closest to the color of the portion of the source image corresponding to the cell;
- determining a weighted average value of color intensity for a pixel to be displayed in response to the respective quantum assigned to the cells about the image of the pixel to be displayed and the location of the center of cells about the image of the pixel to be displayed with respect to the center of the pixel to be displayed, wherein the centers of the cells about the image of the pixel to be displayed define verticals of the polygon containing the center of the pixel to be displayed;
- and
- providing the weighted average value for controlling the color intensity of the pixel to be displayed,
- wherein the number of quanta of the set of quanta is less than the number of actual colors of the source image.
In a visual image generating system for generating a visual image in real time by color intensity control of pixels forming the visual image, the visual image able to be derived from a source image having a plurality of cells, each cell having a predetermined color intensity value and a center, a method for true full color real time cell texture modulating the visual image, comprising the steps of:
- subjecting the source image to a tapered quantization scheme for identifying a predetermined number of members of a small set of colors representative of all colors of the source image, wherein the number of members of the set of colors are less than all colors of the source image;
- quantizing the source image by assigning a neatest color of the set to each cell of the source image;
- and controlling the color intensity of each pixel of the visual image in response to the assigned nearest color for the cells surrounding a respective center of each pixel.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.