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Application of the Extended Distance Transformation in digital image colorization

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Abstract

In this paper we present a novel colorization scheme that takes advantage of the modified morphological distance transform to propagate the color, scribbled by a user on the grayscale image. First, based on the scribbled image, the topological distance values are computed for each image pixel, describing its distance to the inserted color markers. These values are then complemented with the structural information and luminance changes derived from the original grayscale image. The distances are then used along with gradient based features to reproduce original image structures while propagating the new colors obtained during the additive color blending process. Extensive experiments performed on various kinds of natural images demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed colorization method. They also showed that the main advantage of the presented algorithm is its computational speed and ability to produce visually pleasing colorization results promptly after providing the color information.

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Correspondence to Przemyslaw Lagodzinski.

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Lagodzinski, P., Smolka, B. Application of the Extended Distance Transformation in digital image colorization. Multimed Tools Appl 69, 111–137 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-012-1246-2

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