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Practical Image Processing In C by Craig A. Lindley Recommended

ISBN: 0-471-53062-X       Publisher: Wiley       Pages: ?pp       Price: £32.25

Categories:   graphics

Reviewed by Alex Fiennes in C Vu 3-5 (Jul 1991)

It is set up into two basic sections: the first covers the construction of a black and white still picture digitiser capable of 64 shade colours at up to 640 by 480 resolution. The project components have been chosen to bring the total cost to under $50. The electronic side is dealt with quite rapidly with a summary of the operation and suggestions as to where to obtain the components. A Veroboard layout plan is not provided and the author suggests that it should not be attempted as a first project but it shouldn't present any serious difficulties for someone with reasonable electronics experience.

The book then moves onto the low-level control software for the board. This is all given in well documented assembly code but the general theory is also documented as well. This set of routines provides an interface to the board for whichever programming language is required. On the whole this section can be ignored because it works (I hope) and that is all that matters.

There then follows a high-level control structure to tie together all the data acquisition methods necessary for grabbing pictures of various sizes and complexities including full colour. The full colour method is performed by taking three monochrome pictures taken with RGB filters over the lenses and then combining them using an algorithm called the median cut algorithm. This is the one item in the whole book where he fails to expand fully on the 6000 line program necessary to produce the full colour image but there is a reference to another paper if you are really desperate.

The book then proceeds to zip through detailed descriptions of PCX, PCC & TIFF graphics standards (including a complete reprint of the TIFF standard in an appendix), various styles of continuous tone hard-copy devices and all the supporting programs to go with them.

We now reach the second section! This is concerned with image processing and although it is a logical extension of the first half of the book it is perfectly valid as a tome in itself. The book covers all the 'standard' filters (point, area, general etc) in commendable detail and also covers areas of use for the filters rather than just treating them in complete isolation as theoretical ideas. This section is also widely illustrated with black and white pictures of the filters and their effects and contains a section at the back with 14 high quality colour and grey scale plates for reference.

As you may have gathered, I like this book. It contains the right amount of information for the complexities of the problems it addresses and covers a very wide range of extremely valid and related items. I would strongly recommend it to everyone who was considering getting involved with non-vector graphics and also to anyone who would like to see how a good book should be put together.

One small niggle. Why must I STILL have to pay $40.00 for an accompanying disk (although this one does contain free pictures to experiment on!!)?