Project 1
Images of the Russian Empire -- colorizing the Prokudin-Gorskii photo collection
Evan Shimizu (eshimizu)
Summary
A sample source image
This project automatically reconstructs full color images from the
Prokudin-Gorskii photo collection. The source images each have three
separate images taken with different color filters: Blue, Green and Red.
These images are given to a MATLAB program and are automatically split into
three parts and aligned before being combined into a full color image.
Methods
Images were aligned in different ways depending on their size. Small images
were aligned by performing a Normalized Cross-Correlation (NCC) operation using the
Green channel as a base over a user-specified window. The largest value
found in the window after the NCC operation is the offset for that channel.
I used the window [-15, 15] for the small examples here. Template images were
created by cropping off a 15 pixel border from the original channel image.
For larger images, an image pyramid speedup scheme was used. Each base image
and template image were repeatedly downsampled to half-size until they
were too small to perform any meaningful correlation. The NCC operation
was then perfomed at this coarse level and the estimated offset was
used in the next level down the pyramid as a starting point for a
more limited search. I had the algorithm use a [-10, 10] window at
each stage and created the template image by cropping off a 500 pixel
border from the original channel image.
Results
All images used the Green channel as the base channel except where noted.
Large images (the .tif files) will have an additional link to the full image
in their descriptions.
File Name: 00029u.tif
Full Image
Red Offset: [53, 20]
Blue Offset: [-38, -15]
File Name: 00087u.tif
Full Image
Red Offset: [60, 16]
Blue Offset: [-47, -37]
File Name: 00106v.jpg
This image aligned better using the Red channel as the base.
I suspect that the Green channel wasn't bright enough to get
a good correlation with the other channels.
Green Offset: [10, 0]
Blue Offset: [5, 2]
File Name: 00128u.tif
Full Image
Red Offset: [18, 24]
Blue Offset: [-34, -24]
File Name: 00212u.tif
Full Image
Red Offset: [64, -5]
Blue Offset: [-47, 10]
File Name: 00458u.tif
Full Image
Red Offset: [44, 28]
Blue Offset: [-41, -5]
File Name: 00737u.tif
Full Image
Red Offset: [35, 9]
Blue Offset: [-14, -6]
File Name: 00757v.jpg
Red Offset: [4, 3]
Blue Offset: [-1, -2]
File Name: 00822u.tif
Full Image
Red Offset: [69, 9]
Blue Offset: [-56, -24]
File Name: 00888v.jpg
Red Offset: [7, 1]
Blue Offset: [-5, 1]
File Name: 00889v.jpg
Red Offset: [4, 2]
Blue Offset: [-1, 0]
File Name: 00892u.tif
Full Image
Red Offset: [27, 2]
Blue Offset: [-15, -1]
File Name: 00907v.jpg
Red Offset: [4, 0]
Blue Offset: [-1, 2]
File Name: 01031v.jpg
Red Offset: [4, 1]
Blue Offset: [0, 0]
File Name: 01043u.tif
Full Image
Red Offset: [27, 9]
Blue Offset: [17, -9]
File Name: 01047u.tif
Full Image
Red Offset: [48, 15]
Blue Offset: [-23, -19]
File Name: 01540u.tif
Full Image
Red Offset: [83, 9]
Blue Offset: [-81, -16]
File Name: 01657v.jpg
Red Offset: [7, 1]
Blue Offset: [-4, 0]
File Name: 01880v.jpg
Red Offset: [9, 3]
Blue Offset: [-5, -1]