Preface

Thank you for buying this book. I hope it provides you the knowledge and insight the subject deserves. This book has proven to be an adventure, leading me to meet Pedro Meyer and E.R. Beardsley. I also became acquainted with Jan Lindenbaum, Olle Nilsson, and Alf Jansson (Swedish Television in Stockholm, Sweden) who assisted with the JAS-Gripen crash images. I thank Ben Dawson for a superlative technical edit, Simon Yates for a helpful development edit, and Betsy Bayha for taking the time to glance at the legal and social issues chapters. Kudos as well to Jim Hill, Beth Kohler, and the numerous folks at Wordware Publishing, Inc. whose gracious efforts have produced this book. The remaining errors are all mine.

Future book editions will also acknowledge contributors, perhaps even yourself—please read the Call to Readers. Good luck in your imaging endeavors and feel free to contact me through Wordware Publishing, Inc.

About This Book

This is an introductory digital imaging book for readers lacking extensive mathematical skills. Consequently, a principal goal is to achieve understanding while eliminating complex mathematical entry barriers. By relying on understandable analogies, the material attempts to avoid impenetrable barriers necessarily contained in traditional imaging discussions. This allows readers to concentrate on understanding theory, processes, and expected outcomes rather than coefficient indefiniteness, Poission distributions, eigenvalues, etc. But, truth be known, academic rigor is lost though intuition is gained.

I layered the material in increasing technical depth to make it accessible to various audiences. The first section deals primarily with light, vision system anatomy, and color perception. This material explains why some imaging aspirations are physically unattainable. Following sections assume readers read this material.

The second section discusses essential imaging peripherals: CCD components found in cameras and scanners, display subsystems, and low-cost commercial printers. It also includes a discussion of device independent color, explaining why it is difficult to reproduce faithful images on different devices. Associated appendices cover display controller and printer (color and black and white) programming considerations essential for an end-to-end imaging system perspective.

The third section painlessly presents a few introductory mathematical concepts and briefly discusses image file formats. It discusses monochromatic and elementary color space, and digital halftone theory and color quantization. I have yet to find this section’s material within any other single book.

The fourth section provides listings and detailed explanatory discussions for the previous three sections. This section clearly illustrates, by example, digital image processing programming. While the listings are deliberately lowest common denominator MS-DOS programs, readers can port the processing routines to other operating system environments. While MS-DOS is finally fading, its use here is helpful since it isolates image processing mechanics from numerous other complex programming distractions. The programs also operate with MS-DOS consoles available from Microsoft Windows 95.

The fifth and final section addresses the legal and social issues that digital imaging technology presents.

W. David Schwaderer
Saratoga, California
June 1997

Call To Readers

Books frequently omit relevant material through oversight or pressing schedules. If you are aware of an error, an interesting point, or a technique this book should include but omits, the author would like to hear about it and genuinely seeks your insights. The acknowledgment section below will contain contributing readers’ insights when the contributions are incorporated in future editions. Please send written suggestions on paper to the author via Wordware Publishing, Inc. Contributions must be new and accompanying evaluation reference material is useful.

Contributions become the property of the author who reserves suggestion final disposition determination.

Contributing Reader Acknowledgments