Automated fake color separation: Combining computer vision and computer graphics

A system is described for the automation of the color separation process. In current color separation systems, humans must visually segment line-art images, and using pen and ink, delineate the segments in a manner that enables a computer graphics system to be used interactively to color in each segment. The goal of this research was to remove the labor-intensive human visual segmentation, by adding rudimentary visual processing capabilities to the computer graphics system. This is possible through the use of computer vision algorithms which incorporate general knowledge about line-art, and are based on image features that are used by the human visual system in the early stages of visual processing. A major color separation company is planning the hardware implementation of a vision-graphics system based on these algorithms, and the State University of New York is applying for two patents based on this research.