Comments on: Standards for false and pseudo-color imagery?

Question: Standards for false and pseudo-color imagery?

fake — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 11:05:16 -0800

In data graphing and visualization, are there any existing standards for false-color or pseudo-color images?

By: nekton

nekton — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 13:15:21 -0800

I have no idea if this is what you mean, but I know when you're doing 4-band remote sensing, the standard set-up is:
Band 2 (green) - blue
Band 3 (red) - green
Band 4 (IR) - red

By: fake

fake — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 13:35:43 -0800

That's exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for, but I'm hoping for some docs/spec sheets that describe the standards -- if they exist.

I'm graphing psychophysical data for neuroscience research, and so far, the best answers I can find are things like "I just adjust colors to show the data the best". In the end, if I can't find much else, I will design some perceptually motivated false-color/pseudocolor schemes.

By: devilsbrigade

devilsbrigade — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 13:42:42 -0800

My only advice would be to look at what's been published and try to follow those examples. That's how these things get started anyway.

By: fake

fake — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 14:42:20 -0800

I appreciate the advice, devilsbrigade, but that's exactly the opposite of what I'm trying to do.

By: maxpower

maxpower — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 16:49:11 -0800

"I just adjust colors to show the data the best" could be interpreted as histogram stretching.

I don't think there would be much point of finding the original paper on false colour images to prove that they are valuable, but you certainly could hunt it down. It is an accepted standard method of data visualization, especially with remotely sensed photos / images.

By: anaelith

anaelith — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 19:36:37 -0800

Perhaps you could check around the NASA site? Between dealing with a lot of false colour stuff and being a government agency, they probably have a standard somewhere. (I would search myself but someone who has a better understanding [you] could do a better job.)

By: fake

fake — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 21:33:09 -0800

I don't think there would be much point of finding the original paper on false colour images to prove that they are valuable, but you certainly could hunt it down.

I am not trying to prove that false-color images are valuable. I am trying (still trying, actually) to locate standards which describe color schemes for various datatypes. See nekton's answer for an example.