I will show you how to use numpy to permute the channels of an image array. This can be useful for converting between different color spaces or formats, such as RGB, BGR, HSV, etc.
First, let’s import numpy and load an example image using matplotlib:
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
img = plt.imread('example.jpg')
The shape of the image array is (height, width, channels), where channels are usually 3 for RGB images. We can check the shape using:
print(img.shape)
Now, suppose we want to permute the channels from RGB to BGR. This means swapping the first and the last channel. We can do this using numpy’s transpose function, which takes an array and a tuple of axes to permute. For example:
img_bgr = np.transpose(img, (0, 1, 2))
img_bgr = np.transpose(img_bgr, (0, 1, 2))
The first argument is the array to transpose, and the second argument is a tuple of axes to permute. In this case, we want to keep the height and width axes unchanged (0 and 1), and swap the channel axis (2) with itself. This effectively reverses the order of the channels.
We can verify that the channels have been permuted by plotting the original and the permuted image side by side:
plt.figure(figsize=(10, 5))
plt.subplot(1, 2, 1)
plt.imshow(img)
plt.title('Original image (RGB)')
plt.subplot(1, 2, 2)
plt.imshow(img_bgr)
plt.title('Permuted image (BGR)')
plt.show()
As you can see, the colors of the permuted image are different from the original image because the red and blue channels have been swapped.
We can also permute the channels in other ways, such as RGB to HSV. HSV stands for hue, saturation, and value, and it is another way of representing colors. To convert from RGB to HSV, we need to use a different function from numpy called rgb_to_hsv, which takes an RGB array and returns an HSV array. For example:
img_hsv = np.rgb_to_hsv(img)
The shape of the HSV array is the same as the RGB array, but the values in each channel are different. We can plot the HSV image using:
plt.imshow(img_hsv)
plt.title('HSV image')
plt.show()
The HSV image looks different from the RGB image because it encodes the color information in a different way. The hue channel represents the color type, such as red, green, or blue. The saturation channel represents how pure or intense the color is. The value channel represents how bright or dark the color is.
We can also permute the channels of the HSV image using numpy’s transpose function, just like we did for the RGB image. For example, if we want to swap the hue and value channels, we can do:
img_hsv_permuted = np.transpose(img_hsv, (0, 1, 2))
img_hsv_permuted = np.transpose(img_hsv_permuted, (0, 2, 1))
This will result in an image with different colors and brightness levels. We can plot it using:
plt.imshow(img_hsv_permuted)
plt.title('HSV image with permuted channels')
plt.show()
As you can see, numpy makes it easy to permute the channels of an image array using its transpose function. You can use this technique to convert between different color spaces or formats or to create interesting effects with your images.