Hi to everyone I am a newcomer here and i need your valuable advise. Is there any software that allows either WATERSED or SUPER-IMPOSE an image? Here is an example of what i wish to do.............I attach 3 photos. I want to transform the ORIGINAL so as to look eitrer like the WATERSHED one or like the SUPER - IMPOSED.
Any other thoughts on how to do what i wish are welcomed.
Thanks in advance for your help..........

Hi to everyone I am a newcomer here and i need your valuable advise. Is there any software that allows either WATERSED or SUPER-IMPOSE an image? Here is an example of what i wish to do.............I attach 2 photos. I want to transform the ORIGINAL1 so as to look either like the FINAL.
Any other thoughts on how to do what i wish are welcomed.
Thanks in advance for your help..........

Hi Alek and welcome to Retouch Pro. I took your photo and used the Stylize/Find Edges Filter. Then I used Image/Adjustment/Threshold to arrive at what I've posted.

In your first post you can obtain the first watershed by using the Image/Adjustments/Invert command in photoshop

I would invert and use levels to get the 'watershed'.

Hi Alek and welcome to Retouch Pro. I took your photo and used the Stylize/Find Edges Filter. Then I used Image/Adjustment/Threshold to arrive at what I've posted.

In your first post you can obtain the first watershed by using the Image/Adjustments/Invert command in photoshop

Thanks for your interest.
Which software did you use?
Is there any way to remove those black signs that are in the interior of the objects? In other words i only wish the outline of the object to be shown.

P.S. Sorry for my terrible English!!!

Adobe Streamline or Adobe Illustrator might work.

Illustrator is a big, expensive and complicated program,so if you only want something simple, Streamline should work for this and (if you know photoshop) you can learn it in a couple hours.

http://downloads.zdnet.co.uk/0,39025604,39046449s,00.htm

Mig

if all you want is single line outlines, then this is not going to be possible without quite a bit of hand work. the edges just dont come out to single line outlines like in your original desired work. even with strong contrasts, inverting, levels, curves and so on, it just wont come out the way you show you want without doing some, or a lot, of hand work. you could prep the image by hand to do this, or you could draw the lines in you want after some filtering, but the closest i could get was this:

and as you can see, i can get it down to lines, but not single line outlines.

craig

edit: actually, i shld never say never. i tend to eat too many words when i do that :) you might try this in a vector image mode and have better luck.

Hi Alek
Welcome to RetouchPro

The problem is that most of the outline is on the dark areas but there are some lines on the light areas. There is no automatic way to do this. In my picture I have isolated the dark areas but the rest would have to be drawn by hand.

I don’t know what these samples are but the watersed pictures look like a contour map rather than a density map.

Ken

Thanks everybody for your advises. I tried to work most of them and i came to some conclusions. But let me expain you what i wish to do (i attach a new foto that is the one i wish to transform). In this foto you can see some pieces of rock. I wish each one of them to have a solid (uniform) color in its interior. As i am going to use this foto for a software that measures the size of each piece, i wish each of them to be (to the extend that something like this can be accompished) easily separated from those that surround it (i understand that is something very difficult).
Once again thanks for your interest.

Looking forward for your answers.............

Usually such tasks are easier handled by image processing applications like ImageJ (http://rsb.info.nih.gov/ij/), NIH Image (http://rsb.info.nih.gov/nih-image/), AstraImage (www.astraimage.com) etc. I have seen many plugins and commands catering to such specific needs.

--
Krishna

as you suspected, this is a very difficult task, especially if you dont do any hand outlining to begin with. it's a combination of a lot of different problems. you've got hues on different rocks that are close to each other, making finding the edges automatically quite difficult. you can get fairly good on some, but not on all. the same condition exists with shades.

you then wanted a solid color in the interior, but i assume a different color or shade for the edge to give the outline of the rock. if you could find the edges first, this second part wouldnt be that difficult. you could just use a good fill tool set at the right tolerance and it would be fine. but without those good edges first, it's tougher to do.

i played around with a LOT of different filters and plugins. not a one of them could find all the edges well enough to really do the job. if you could space the rocks first so that there were gaps between each one and if the rocks were sitting on a nice solid background, this would be a lot easier. i suspect, however, that whatever you're doing this for doesnt allow for such conveniences. and, if i may ask, just what are you doing this for? you doing some sort of analysis of lunar surfaces or something?

i'll give you this, it's an interesting study in edges and edge technology and i can say that the current programs and plugins fall short of really doing an excellent job, but then this is a pretty tricky image.

i'm posting one image that is a combo of two of the best results i saved. i saved quite a few and i rejected a LOT that werent saved :)

craig

If you want your program to be robust, it will have to operate on two images so that zero contrast rocks can be distinguished. There are some rock boundaries in your photo that have no contrast. The only reason I "think" I can see the edge of the rock is psychological--ie., based on previous experience with rocks--there could easily be optical illusions that fool me without the benefit of a stereo view.

Another possible option is to take two photos with the light from different angles.

Bart

I do not know if the attached comes close to your requirements, but how I got it is slightly convoluted. This is a png created from a program called "Deep Paint 2D". This is a discontinued (but still available for download) program that is no longer supported. Its purpose is PhotoArt and you can "clone" an image (paint on one blank layer and pick up the colors and details from an image you load into another layer). One of the slider bar controls is called "Outline", and it does just what it says, it picks up edges and trys to draw an outline. Anyway, that is how I made the attached in about 15 seconds.
Do a Google search on Deep Paint or go to this link if you are interested in the program:
http://www.download.com/Deep-Paint/3000-2191_4-10398243.html

Ken

Here is a jpg (compressed) of your "real" set of rocks, done the same way as described in the last post.

Ken