How to manualy set white balance of a uEye camera? - c++

How can I programmatically set the white balance of an uEye USB camera (from the IDS manufacturer) to work with no automatic white balance and pre-defined multipliers when is_SetWhiteBalanceMultipliers() function is obsolete?
Some background: I work with a uEye USB2 camera (from IDS) connected to Linux machine. I need to get an RGB image with pre-defined colors (of cause on a pre-defined scene) from the camera. For example, I want to configure the WB to red 1.25 multiplier, green 1.0, and blue 2.0 multiplier.
For this task, I am using the uEye SDK on Linux (header file ueye.h).
The manual (A: Camera basics > Camera parameters) states that the is_SetWhiteBalanceMultipliers() function is obsolete and suggests to use is_SetAutoParameter() function instead. It was easy to disable the auto-white balance (is_SetAutoParameter( hCam, IS_SET_ENABLE_AUTO_WHITEBALANCE, 0, 0), but I struggle to find a way to configure the red/green/blue multipliers. The parameter IS_SET_AUTO_WB_OFFSET and IS_SET_AUTO_WB_GAIN_RANGE work only when the automatic white balance engaged and do nothing when it is disabled. I will be grateful for any suggestions!

I had the same issue. I think you can achieve the old result using the function "is_SetHardwareGain" on which you directly pass the main, red, green and blue gains. In my case I disabled the white balance before doing it just to make sure it works. In this example, I wanted to set the values to RGB gains = [8%, 0%, 32%] and the master gain to 0% (to not confuse with gain factors 0% normally corresponds to 1x gain factor):
double param1, param2; param1=0;
is_SetColorCorrection (hCam, IS_CCOR_DISABLE, &param1); //Disables the color fitler correction matrix
flagIDS = is_SetAutoParameter (hCam, IS_SET_ENABLE_AUTO_WHITEBALANCE, &param1, &param2);
param1=WB_MODE_DISABLE;
flagIDS = is_SetAutoParameter (hCam, IS_SET_ENABLE_AUTO_SENSOR_WHITEBALANCE, &param1, &param2);
flagIDS = is_SetHardwareGain (hCam, 0, 8, 0, 32);

Related

CAP_PROP_WB_TEMPERATURE does not make any changes in OpenCV

cap.open(0);
cap.set(CAP_PROP_AUTO_WB, 0);
cap.set(CAP_PROP_WB_TEMPERATURE, 10);
I tried to set the WhiteBalance above but the capture is not changing whatever I write to the temperature. Am I missing something?
I read from several forums that some properties have to be in a certain interval. Like CAP_PROP_AUTO_EXPOSURE should expect two values: 0.75 auto exposure On and 0.25 as auto exposure OFF. Once you set auto exposure Off with 0.25 then set exposure to any value that you desire. But I did not see a similar thing for wb temperature.
Note:
Camera Model: DFM 27UR0135-ML - USB 3.0 color board camera
I don't think it doesn't support balance settings, because the code below was working:
//WhiteBalance
Ptr<xphoto::WhiteBalancer> wb;
wb = xphoto::createLearningBasedWB();
wb ->balanceWhite(frame, frame);
But I didnt get good results with automatic white balancing, that's why I want to change the parameters like temperature, red, blue manually.
Auto white balance is OFF at value 1 and ON at value 3.
cap.set(CAP_PROP_AUTO_WB, 1);

How to improve accuracy of estimateAffine2D (or estimageRigidTransform) in OpenCV?

I have two sets of points, one from time t-1 and current time t. The first set was generated using goodFeaturesToTrack, and the latter from using calcOpticalFlowPyrLK(). Using these two sets of points, I then estimate a transformation matrix via estimateAffine2DPartial() in order to keep track of its scale & rotation. Code snippet is listed below:
// Precompute image pyramids
maxLvl = cv::buildOpticalFlowPyramid(_imgPrev, imPyr1, _winSize, maxLvl, true);
maxLvl = cv::buildOpticalFlowPyramid(tmpImg, imPyr2, _winSize, maxLvl, true);
// Optical flow call for tracking pixels
cv::calcOpticalFlowPyrLK(imPyr1, imPyr2, _currentPoints, nextPts, status, err, _winSize, maxLvl, _terminationCriteria, 0, 0.000001);
// Get transformation matrix between the two data sets
cv::Mat H = cv::estimateAffinePartial2D(_currentPoints, nextPts, inlier_mask, cv::RANSAC, 10.0, 2000, 0.99);
Using H, I then map my masking points using perspectiveTransform(). The result seems accurate for the first few dozen frames until I notice some drift (in terms of rotation) occurring when the object I am tracking continues to rotate (usually when rotation becomes > M_PI). I'm honestly stumped on where the culprit is, but my main suspicion is perhaps my window size for optical flow might be too small, or too big. However, tweaking the window size did not seem to help, the position of my object is still accurate, but the estimated rotation (and scale) got worse. Can anyone hope to shed a light on this?
Warm regards and thanks.
EDIT: Images attached to show drift issue
Starting Frame
First few frames -- Rotation OK
Z-Rotation Drift occurs -- see anchor line has drifted towards the red rectangle.
Lucas Kanade tracker needs more features. Guess the tracking template you provided is not good enough.
(1) Try with other feature rich real images? e.g Opencv feautre tracking template image
(2) fix scale. Since you are doing simulation, you can try to anchor the size first.
calcOpticalFlowPyrLK is widely used in visual inertial state estimation studies. such as Semi direct visual odometry or VINSMONO. You can try to find the code inside those project to see how other people is playing with the feature and parameters

Do I need to gamma correct the final color output on a modern computer/monitor

I've been under the assumption that my gamma correction pipeline should be as follows:
Use sRGB format for all textures loaded in (GL_SRGB8_ALPHA8) as all art programs pre-gamma correct their files. When sampling from a GL_SRGB8_ALPHA8 texture in a shader OpenGL will automatically convert to linear space.
Do all lighting calculations, post processing, etc. in linear space.
Convert back to sRGB space when writing final color that will be displayed on the screen.
Note that in my case the final color write involves me writing from a FBO (which is a linear RGB texture) to the back buffer.
My assumption has been challenged as if I gamma correct in the final stage my colors are brighter than they should be. I set up for a solid color to be drawn by my lights of value { 255, 106, 0 }, but when I render I get { 255, 171, 0 } (as determined by print-screening and color picking). Instead of orange I get yellow. If I don't gamma correct at the final step I get exactly the right value of { 255, 106, 0 }.
According to some resources modern LCD screens mimic CRT gamma. Do they always? If not, how can I tell if I should gamma correct? Am I going wrong somewhere else?
Edit 1
I've now noticed that even though the color I write with the light is correct, places where I use colors from textures are not correct (but rather far darker as I would expect without gamma correction). I don't know where this disparity is coming from.
Edit 2
After trying GL_RGBA8 for my textures instead of GL_SRGB8_ALPHA8, everything looks perfect, even when using the texture values in lighting computations (if I half the intensity of the light, the output color values are halfed).
My code is no longer taking gamma correction into account anywhere, and my output looks correct.
This confuses me even more, is gamma correction no longer needed/used?
Edit 3 - In response to datenwolf's answer
After some more experimenting I'm confused on a couple points here.
1 - Most image formats are stored non-linearly (in sRGB space)
I've loaded a few images (in my case both .png and .bmp images) and examined the raw binary data. It appears to me as though the images are actually in the RGB color space, as if I compare the values of pixels with an image editing program with the byte array I get in my program they match up perfectly. Since my image editor is giving me RGB values, this would indicate the image stored in RGB.
I'm using stb_image.h/.c to load my images and followed it all the way through loading a .png and did not see anywhere that it gamma corrected the image while loading. I also examined the .bmps in a hex editor and the values on disk matched up for them.
If these images are actually stored on disk in linear RGB space, how am I supposed to (programatically) know when to specify an image is in sRGB space? Is there some way to query for this that a more featured image loader might provide? Or is it up to the image creators to save their image as gamma corrected (or not) - meaning establishing a convention and following it for a given project. I've asked a couple artists and neither of them knew what gamma correction is.
If I specify my images are sRGB, they are too dark unless I gamma correct in the end (which would be understandable if the monitor output using sRGB, but see point #2).
2 - "On most computers the effective scanout LUT is linear! What does this mean though?"
I'm not sure I can find where this thought is finished in your response.
From what I can tell, having experimented, all monitors I've tested on output linear values. If I draw a full screen quad and color it with a hard-coded value in a shader with no gamma correction the monitor displays the correct value that I specified.
What the sentence I quoted above from your answer and my results would lead me to believe is that modern monitors output linear values (i.e. do not emulate CRT gamma).
The target platform for our application is the PC. For this platform (excluding people with CRTs or really old monitors), would it be reasonable to do whatever your response to #1 is, then for #2 to not gamma correct (i.e. not perform the final RGB->sRGB transformation - either manually or using GL_FRAMEBUFFER_SRGB)?
If this is so, what are the platforms on which GL_FRAMEBUFFER_SRGB is meant for (or where it would be valid to use it today), or are monitors that use linear RGB really that new (given that GL_FRAMEBUFFER_SRGB was introduced 2008)?
--
I've talked to a few other graphics devs at my school and from the sounds of it, none of them have taken gamma correction into account and they have not noticed anything incorrect (some were not even aware of it). One dev in particular said that he got incorrect results when taking gamma into account so he then decided to not worry about gamma. I'm unsure what to do in my project for my target platform given the conflicting information I'm getting online/seeing with my project.
Edit 4 - In response to datenwolf's updated answer
Yes, indeed. If somewhere in the signal chain a nonlinear transform is applied, but all the pixel values go unmodified from the image to the display, then that nonlinearity has already been pre-applied on the image's pixel values. Which means, that the image is already in a nonlinear color space.
Your response would make sense to me if I was examining the image on my display. To be sure I was clear, when I said I was examining the byte array for the image I mean I was examining the numerical value in memory for the texture, not the image output on the screen (which I did do for point #2). To me the only way I could see what you're saying to be true then is if the image editor was giving me values in sRGB space.
Also note that I did try examining the output on monitor, as well as modifying the texture color (for example, dividing by half or doubling it) and the output appeared correct (measured using the method I describe below).
How did you measure the signal response?
Unfortunately my methods of measurement are far cruder than yours. When I said I experimented on my monitors what I meant was that I output solid color full screen quad whose color was hard coded in a shader to a plain OpenGL framebuffer (which does not do any color space conversion when written to). When I output white, 75% gray, 50% gray, 25% gray and black the correct colors are displayed. Now here my interpretation of correct colors could most certainly be wrong. I take a screenshot and then use an image editing program to see what the values of the pixels are (as well as a visual appraisal to make sure the values make sense). If I understand correctly, if my monitors were non-linear I would need to perform a RGB->sRGB transformation before presenting them to the display device for them to be correct.
I'm not going to lie, I feel I'm getting a bit out of my depth here. I'm thinking the solution I might persue for my second point of confusion (the final RGB->sRGB transformation) will be a tweakable brightness setting and default it to what looks correct on my devices (no gamma correction).
First of all you must understand that the nonlinear mapping applied to the color channels is often more than just a simple power function. sRGB nonlinearity can be approximated by about x^2.4, but that's not really the real deal. Anyway your primary assumptions are more or less correct.
If your textures are stored in the more common image file formats, they will contain the values as they are presented to the graphics scanout. Now there are two common hardware scenarios:
The scanout interface outputs a linear signal and the display device will then internally apply a nonlinear mapping. Old CRT monitors were nonlinear due to their physics: The amplifiers could put only so much current into the electron beam, the phosphor saturating and so on – that's why the whole gamma thing was introduced in the first place, to model the nonlinearities of CRT displays.
Modern LCD and OLED displays either use resistor ladders in their driver amplifiers, or they have gamma ramp lookup tables in their image processors.
Some devices however are linear, and ask the image producing device to supply a proper matching LUT for the desired output color profile on the scanout.
On most computers the effective scanout LUT is linear! What does this mean though? A little detour:
For illustration I quickly hooked up my laptop's analogue display output (VGA connector) to my analogue oscilloscope: Blue channel onto scope channel 1, green channel to scope channel 2, external triggering on line synchronization signal (HSync). A quick and dirty OpenGL program, deliberately written with immediate mode was used to generate a linear color ramp:
#include <GL/glut.h>
void display()
{
GLuint win_width = glutGet(GLUT_WINDOW_WIDTH);
GLuint win_height = glutGet(GLUT_WINDOW_HEIGHT);
glViewport(0,0, win_width, win_height);
glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION);
glLoadIdentity();
glOrtho(0, 1, 0, 1, -1, 1);
glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW);
glLoadIdentity();
glBegin(GL_QUAD_STRIP);
glColor3f(0., 0., 0.);
glVertex2f(0., 0.);
glVertex2f(0., 1.);
glColor3f(1., 1., 1.);
glVertex2f(1., 0.);
glVertex2f(1., 1.);
glEnd();
glutSwapBuffers();
}
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
glutInit(&argc, argv);
glutInitDisplayMode(GLUT_RGBA | GLUT_DOUBLE);
glutCreateWindow("linear");
glutFullScreen();
glutDisplayFunc(display);
glutMainLoop();
return 0;
}
The graphics output was configured with the Modeline
"1440x900_60.00" 106.50 1440 1528 1672 1904 900 903 909 934 -HSync +VSync
(because that's the same mode the flat panel runs in, and I was using cloning mode)
gamma=2 LUT on the green channel.
linear (gamma=1) LUT on the blue channel
This is how the signals of a single scanout line look like (upper curve: Ch2 = green, lower curve: Ch1 = blue):
You can clearly see the x⟼x² and x⟼x mappings (parabola and linear shapes of the curves).
Now after this little detour we know, that the pixel values that go to the main framebuffer, go there as they are: The OpenGL linear ramp underwent no further changes and only when a nonlinear scanout LUT was applied it altered the signal sent to the display.
Either way the values you present to the scanout (which means the on-screen framebuffers) will undergo a nonlinear mapping at some point in the signal chain. And for all standard consumer devices this mapping will be according to the sRGB standard, because it's the smallest common factor (i.e. images represented in the sRGB color space can be reproduced on most output devices).
Since most programs, like webbrowsers assume the output to undergo a sRGB to display color space mapping, they simply copy the pixel values of the standard image file formats to the on-screen frame as they are, without performing a color space conversion, thereby implying that the color values within those images are in sRGB color space (or they will often merely convert to sRGB, if the image color profile is not sRGB); the correct thing to do (if, and only if the color values written to the framebuffer are scanned out to the display unaltered; assuming that scanout LUT is part of the display), would be conversion to the specified color profile the display expects.
But this implies, that the on-screen framebuffer itself is in sRGB color space (I don't want to split hairs about how idiotic that is, lets just accept this fact).
How to bring this together with OpenGL? First of all, OpenGL does all it's color operations linearly. However since the scanout is expected to be in some nonlinear color space, this means, that the end result of the rendering operations of OpenGL somehow must be brougt into the on-screen framebuffer color space.
This is where the ARB_framebuffer_sRGB extension (which went core with OpenGL-3) enters the picture, which introduced new flags used for the configuration of window pixelformats:
New Tokens
Accepted by the <attribList> parameter of glXChooseVisual, and by
the <attrib> parameter of glXGetConfig:
GLX_FRAMEBUFFER_SRGB_CAPABLE_ARB 0x20B2
Accepted by the <piAttributes> parameter of
wglGetPixelFormatAttribivEXT, wglGetPixelFormatAttribfvEXT, and
the <piAttribIList> and <pfAttribIList> of wglChoosePixelFormatEXT:
WGL_FRAMEBUFFER_SRGB_CAPABLE_ARB 0x20A9
Accepted by the <cap> parameter of Enable, Disable, and IsEnabled,
and by the <pname> parameter of GetBooleanv, GetIntegerv, GetFloatv,
and GetDoublev:
FRAMEBUFFER_SRGB 0x8DB9
So if you have a window configured with such a sRGB pixelformat and enable sRGB rasterization mode in OpenGL with glEnable(GL_FRAMEBUFFER_SRGB); the result of the linear colorspace rendering operations will be transformed in sRGB color space.
Another way would be to render everything into an off-screen FBO and to the color conversion in a postprocessing shader.
But that's only the output side of rendering signal chain. You also got input signals, in the form of textures. And those are usually images, with their pixel values stored nonlinearly. So before those can be used in linear image operations, such images must be brought into a linear color space first. Lets just ignore for the time being, that mapping nonlinear color spaces into linear color spaces opens several of cans of worms upon itself – which is why the sRGB color space is so ridiculously small, namely to avoid those problems.
So to address this an extension EXT_texture_sRGB was introduced, which turned out to be so vital, that it never went through being ARB, but went straight into the OpenGL specification itself: Behold the GL_SRGB… internal texture formats.
A texture loaded with this format undergoes a sRGB to linear RGB colorspace transformation, before being used to source samples. This gives linear pixel values, suitable for linear rendering operations, and the result can then be validly transformed to sRGB when going to the main on-screen framebuffer.
A personal note on the whole issue: Presenting images on the on-screen framebuffer in the target device color space IMHO is a huge design flaw. There's no way to do everything right in such a setup without going insane.
What one really wants is to have the on-screen framebuffer in a linear, contact color space; the natural choice would be CIEXYZ. Rendering operations would naturally take place in the same contact color space. Doing all graphics operations in contact color spaces, avoids the opening of the aforementioned cans-of-worms involved with trying to push a square peg named linear RGB through a nonlinear, round hole named sRGB.
And although I don't like the design of Weston/Wayland very much, at least it offers the opportunity to actually implement such a display system, by having the clients render and the compositor operate in contact color space and apply the output device's color profiles in a last postprocessing step.
The only drawback of contact color spaces is, that there it's imperative to use deep color (i.e. > 12 bits per color channel). In fact 8 bits are completely insufficient, even with nonlinear RGB (the nonlinearity helps a bit to cover up the lack of perceptible resolution).
Update
I've loaded a few images (in my case both .png and .bmp images) and examined the raw binary data. It appears to me as though the images are actually in the RGB color space, as if I compare the values of pixels with an image editing program with the byte array I get in my program they match up perfectly. Since my image editor is giving me RGB values, this would indicate the image stored in RGB.
Yes, indeed. If somewhere in the signal chain a nonlinear transform is applied, but all the pixel values go unmodified from the image to the display, then that nonlinearity has already been pre-applied on the image's pixel values. Which means, that the image is already in a nonlinear color space.
2 - "On most computers the effective scanout LUT is linear! What does this mean though?
I'm not sure I can find where this thought is finished in your response.
This thought is elaborated in the section that immediately follows, where I show how the values you put into a plain (OpenGL) framebuffer go directly to the monitor, unmodified. The idea of sRGB is "put the values into the images exactly as they are sent to the monitor and build consumer displays to follow that sRGB color space".
From what I can tell, having experimented, all monitors I've tested on output linear values.
How did you measure the signal response? Did you use a calibrated power meter or similar device to measure the light intensity emitted from the monitor in response to the signal? You can't trust your eyes with that, because like all our senses our eyes have a logarithmic signal response.
Update 2
To me the only way I could see what you're saying to be true then is if the image editor was giving me values in sRGB space.
That's indeed the case. Because color management was added to all the widespread graphics systems as an afterthought, most image editors edit pixel values in their destination color space. Note that one particular design parameter of sRGB was, that it should merely retroactively specify the unmanaged, direct value transfer color operations as they were (and mostly still are done) done on consumer devices. Since there happens no color management at all, the values contained in the images and manipulated in editors must be in sRGB already. This works for so long, as long images are not synthetically created in a linear rendering process; in case of the later the render system has to take into account the destination color space.
I take a screenshot and then use an image editing program to see what the values of the pixels are
Which gives you of course only the raw values in the scanout buffer without the gamma LUT and the display nonlinearity applied.
I wanted to give a simple explanation of what went wrong in the initial attempt, because although the accepted answer goes in-depth on colorspace theory, it doesn't really answer that.
The setup of the pipeline was exactly right: use GL_SRGB8_ALPHA8 for textures, GL_FRAMEBUFFER_SRGB (or custom shader code) to convert back to sRGB at the end, and all your intermediate calculations will be using linear light.
The last bit is where you ran into trouble. You wanted a light with a color of (255, 106, 0) - but that's an sRGB color, and you're working with linear light. To get the color you want, you need to convert that color to the linear space, the same way that GL_SRGB8_ALPHA8 is doing for your textures. For your case, this would be a vec3 light with intensity (1, .1441, 0) - this is the value after applying gamma-compression.

Background extraction

Can anyone suggest me a fast way of getting the foreground image?
Currently I am using BackgroundSubtractorMOG2 class to do this. it is very slow. and my task doesn't need that much complex algorithm.
I can get a image of the background in the binging. camera position will not change. so I believe that there is a easy way to do this.
I need to capture a blob of the object moving in front of the camera. and there will be only one object always.
I suggest to do as following, simple solution:
Compute difference matrix:
cv::absdiff(frame, background, absDiff);
This makes each pixel (i,j) in absDiff set to |frame(i,j) - background(i.j)|. Each channel (e.g. R,G,B) is procesed independently.
Convert result to single-channeled monocolor image:
cv::cvtColor(absDiff, absDiffGray, cv::COLOR_BGR2GRAY);
Apply binary filter:
cv::threshold(absDiffGray, absDiffGrayThres, 0, 255, CV_THRESH_BINARY | CV_THRESH_OTSU);
Here we used Ots'u Method to determine appriopriate threshold level. If there was any
noise from step 2, binary filter would remove it.
Apply blob detection in absDiffGrayThres image. This can be one of built-in opencv method's or manually written code which look for pixels positions which vale are 255 (remember about fast opencv pixel retrieval operations)
Such process is enough fast to manage with 640x480 RGB images with frame rate at least 30 fps on quite old Core 2 Duo 2.1 GHz, 4 GB RAM without GPU support.
Hardware remark: be sure that your camera lense aperture is not set to auto-adjust. Imagine following situation: you computed a background image on the beginning. Then, some object appears and covers bigger part of camera view. Less light comes to the lense and, beacause of auto light adjustment, camera increases aperture, background color changes, difference gives a blob in place where actually there is not any object.

Appropriate image sizes to support various android phones & tablets

I am developing an android game in cocos2d. How many different sizes of images do I need to support android devices and tablets?
I have never used that engine but if you mean by image size, device screen size, then you should use an scale.
I took for base the most bigger I could, 1280x800, the one that's on my tablet, just to be more precise in tablets too.
I apply the scale in (X,Y) to every image size and every operation that screen or screen size it's involved. i.e:
soldierBitmapX.move(movement*scaleX)
soldierBitmapY.move(movement*scaleY)
scaleX and scaleY represents your scale and movement represent how many pixel your soodier will move.
This is an example to understand how to apply the scale. I don't recommend you to move your sprites with this operation but have in mind if you should apply the scale.
You can apply this to every screen possible and your game will feet exactly in all of it. Beware of for example QVGA screens, more "squared" in comparision with other standards and very small.
EDIT (how to get the scale):
_xMultiplier = (_screenWidth/(1280.0f/100.0f))/100.0f;
_yMultiplier = (_screenHeight/(800.0f/100.0f))/100.0f;
matrix.setScale(_xMultiplier, _yMultiplier);
this is an example of the scale applied to the matrix that we'll use.
Through ScaleX and ScaleY Property you can easily scale the images .....as for example you take for tablet size is 1280 * 800 ,yo u can scale that sprite and use it; you can also use that image for smaller resolution e.g. 320 * 480.....