grayscale Laplace sharpening implementation - c++

Question

I am trying to implement Laplace sharpening using C++ , here's my code so far:
img = imread("cow.png", 0);
Mat convoSharp() {
//creating new image
Mat res = img.clone();
for (int y = 0; y < res.rows; y++) {
for (int x = 0; x < res.cols; x++) {
res.at<uchar>(y, x) = 0.0;
}
}
//variable declaration
int filter[3][3] = { {0,1,0},{1,-4,1},{0,1,0} };
//int filter[3][3] = { {-1,-2,-1},{0,0,0},{1,2,1} };
int height = img.rows;
int width = img.cols;
int filterHeight = 3;
int filterWidth = 3;
int newImageHeight = height - filterHeight + 1;
int newImageWidth = width - filterWidth + 1;
int i, j, h, w;
//convolution
for (i = 0; i < newImageHeight; i++) {
for (j = 0; j < newImageWidth; j++) {
for (h = i; h < i + filterHeight; h++) {
for (w = j; w < j + filterWidth; w++) {
res.at<uchar>(i,j) += filter[h - i][w - j] * img.at<uchar>(h,w);
}
}
}
}
//img - laplace
for (int y = 0; y < res.rows; y++) {
for (int x = 0; x < res.cols; x++) {
res.at<uchar>(y, x) = img.at<uchar>(y, x) - res.at<uchar>(y, x);
}
}
return res;
}
I don't really know what went wrong, I also tried different filter (1,1,1),(1,-8,1),(1,1,1) and the result is also same (more or less). I don't think that I need to normalize the result because the result is in range of 0 - 255. Can anyone explain what really went wrong in my code?

Answer 1

Problem: uchar is too small to hold partial results of filerting operation.
You should create a temporary variable and add all the filtered positions to this variable then check if value of temp is in range <0,255> if not, you need to clamp the end result to fit <0,255>.
By executing below line
res.at<uchar>(i,j) += filter[h - i][w - j] * img.at<uchar>(h,w);
partial result may be greater than 255 (max value in uchar) or negative (in filter you have -4 or -8). temp has to be singed integer type to handle the case when partial result is negative value.
Fix:
for (i = 0; i < newImageHeight; i++) {
for (j = 0; j < newImageWidth; j++) {
int temp = res.at<uchar>(i,j); // added
for (h = i; h < i + filterHeight; h++) {
for (w = j; w < j + filterWidth; w++) {
temp += filter[h - i][w - j] * img.at<uchar>(h,w); // add to temp
}
}
// clamp temp to <0,255>
res.at<uchar>(i,j) = temp;
}
}
You should also clamp values to <0,255> range when you do the subtraction of images.

Answer 2

The problem is partially that you’re overflowing your uchar, as rafix07 suggested, but that is not the full problem.
The Laplace of an image contains negative values. It has to. And you can’t clamp those to 0, you need to preserve the negative values. Also, it can values up to 4*255 given your version of the filter. What this means is that you need to use a signed 16 bit type to store this output.
But there is a simpler and more efficient approach!
You are computing img - laplace(img). In terms of convolutions (*), this is 1 * img - laplace_kernel * img = (1 - laplace_kernel) * img. That is to say, you can combine both operations into a single convolution. The 1 kernel that doesn’t change the image is [(0,0,0),(0,1,0),(0,0,0)]. Subtract your Laplace kernel from that and you obtain [(0,-1,0),(-1,5,-1),(0,-1,0)].
So, simply compute the convolution with that kernel, and do it using int as intermediate type, which you then clamp to the uchar output range as shown by rafix07.