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I do not have a background in image recognition/feature extraction, but I am in need of a way to extract trees from an image without the background vegetation.
Seen above is a small example of the kind of imagery I'm working with. I have access to multi-spectral imagery as well (though I haven't seen it yet) including NDVI, NIR, Red-edge.
From researching the problem at hand, I am aware that feature extraction is an active area of research and it seems that often supervised and unsupervised machine learning is employed in combination with statistical voodoo such as "PCA". Being able to differentiate between trees and background vegetation has been noted as an area of difficulty in some papers I skimmed over in my research.
There are notable features about the imagery I am working with. First of all, the palm trees have a very distinctive shape. Not only this, but there are obvious differences in the texture of the trees vs the texture of the background vegetation.
I am not an academic, and as such I only have access to publicly available papers for my research. I am looking for relevant algorithms that could help me extract the features of interest to me (trees) that either have an implementation (ideally in C or bindings to C, though I'm aware that it is not a commonly used language in this field) or with publicly available papers/tutorials/sites/etc. detailing the algorithm so that I could implement it myself.
Thanks in advance for any help!
Look into OpenCV, It has a lot of options for supervised/semi supervised Learning methods. As you have mentioned there is a visible texture difference between the tress and background vegetation, a good place for you would be to start would be color based segmentation and evolving it to use textures as well. OpenCV ML tutorial is a good starting point. Moreover you can also combine the NDVI data to create a stronger feature set.
I am trying to set up clear type for my monitor, it has a bgr layout. I do not understand the settings in the cleartype text tuner.
All buttons say "The quickbrown fox..." and ask me to make a judgement. I would like to at least be able to select with confidence the subpixle layout, than make a judgement (it necessary) on the other stuff.
I do not have the time to do a multi-user double blind trial.
So what do the buttons do?, at a technical level.
Each version have some minor difference in colors. Depending on who is reading them you should see a difference and you could have a different choice.
According to MSDN website,[5] Microsoft acknowledges that "[t]ext that
is rendered with ClearType can also appear significantly different
when viewed by individuals with varying levels of color sensitivity.
Some individuals can detect slight differences in color better than
others." This opinion is shared[6] by the font designer Thomas
Phinney, program manager for fonts and core technologies at Adobe
Systems:[7] "There is also considerable variation between individuals
in their sensitivity to color fringing. Some people just notice it and
are bothered by it a lot more than others."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ClearType
For example: I would like to know exactly what system metrics to use to know how wide the borders of a window are going to be. With a given set of visual styles, what borders will appear, and how wide will they be (what system metrics can be queried to know exactly and correctly how wide they'll be)?
Similarly, for a button, how wide are its borders in various states? Using different themes? What system metrics or theme functions can give me a absolutely correct answer on how wide, how tall, how many, what offsets?
Generally speaking, my custom interface code usually contains things like:
myrect.Offset(4,4); // empirical evidence indicates it's actually 4 more pixels per side that Windows adds in but doesn't tell me about...
I hate code like this - littered with magical numbers that may change depending on version of Windows, whether Aero is enabled or not, whether the customer is running this theme or that theme, or using large font / high DPI mode, or not, etc.
But I haven't, in my 15+ years of Windows GUI programming, ever seen a really good white paper or diagram or chart that describes the actual composition of all std. windows controls, and where their various visual parts' metrics come from.
Is anyone out there aware of a resource even similar to this? A white paper? A diagram? A detailed blog discussion? Anything?
Thanks for any help you may have!
EDIT: the GUI guidelines idea doesn't actually describe the internal composition of the controls visual parts - just their overall size and spacing between controls.
I really would love to have something that describes in excruciating detail the border sizes, offsets, and what system metrics control each of these things.
What about the Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines? [Document Index] [PDF download]
It includes diagrams like this:
This is not a complete answer to your question, though, because it only tells you how the controls are supposed to be laid out, not how they actually are. And it doesn’t address what happens under different themes.
As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, visit the help center for guidance.
Closed 10 years ago.
I am the only dev in a very small IT shop and as such I have no one to turn to when it comes to the look of my applications. I am left to my own devices as to what looks good with what and what matches what.
This got me wondering, where do other programmers get their color ideas?
Am I the only programmer who likes all of his apps in grayscale?
What are some sites, books, apps, tips and tricks to giving your custom built application some vibrance and life that end users MIGHT actually appreciate?
I suggest Adobe's Kuler. You can bring in an image, like a logo, and have it suggest a set of 5 colors that work well together. Lots of different options. Also lets you save your palettes. You can then browse through other people's color combinations.
I too prefer my apps in greyscale, although a hint of colour doesn't hurt. For example, meta.stackoverflow.com looks kinda weird to me after spending a lot of time on stackoverflow. If you're looking for just colour ideas, I'd check out these sites for colour suggestions:
http://www.colourlovers.com/
http://kuler.adobe.com/
For typeography:
http://webtypography.net/
Maybe also pick up some good design books? (I like this one http://www.amazon.com/Designer-Grid-Lucienne-Roberts/dp/2880466784)
Contrast is one of those things that can make or break the design of a site. Some colors don't go well together. Red text on a green background, for example, may seem like it'd be a high contrast and easy to read combination, but it's not. And it's ugly. At the same time, you have to be careful with colors of the same hue as well. Light gray text is hard to read on a white background (that one is a little more obvious).
This page talks a little about contrast ratios and provides a good tool to check for it:
http://snook.ca/technical/colour_contrast/colour.html
They mention that you should shoot for a contrast ratio of 4.5:1 with small text. Any less than that and you risk the possibility of users having trouble reading your site.
There's another tip I can give. Whenever you're choosing 2 colors to go next to eachother, pick a boring color that lacks saturation (white, gray, black, or a really dull color) and then pair that up with a color packed with lots of saturation (blue, orange, red, green, etc). In general, this will look better than trying to put two exciting colors next to eachother in the same design (unless you're designing a comic book site).
And then this site has a cool gallery where you might find some inspiration and good color combinations:
http://www.cwd.dk/
But I'll tell you that my methods have changed drastically since I first started out. A little creativity is good, but I now place more importance on usability than anything. I try to keep every design I do simple and usable... kinda like Stackoverflow. I only mention that because my focus on usability tends to influence my design decisions.
A couple of my favorite sites on usability and optimization are
http://www.useit.com/ and
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/
If you are programming for some platform it is better to follow that particular platform's guidelines. (And not to alter system colors without a reason)
If you are programming for the web you might appreciate following a theme from some major web-application, such as gmail.
I have used this one in the past:
http://colorschemedesigner.com/
I would recommend turning on the tooltips (go to 'About & Help' > 'Show Tooltips') so you can see the descriptions of the different types of color schemes offered when you hover over them.
Personnally, I'm a big fan of UI Frameworks like DevExpress which implements skin technology. So, the user has the possibility to switch to his favorite look. For us, it is just five lines of code and our users are always satisfied to have this option. Vista, Office 2003, Office 2007 are just a small set of different options offered to our customers.
Give your users the most bizarre bling colour scheme
(like a combination of purple, green, glaring red, pink)
and you will be assured of a deluge of suggestions from your users.
Even though your colours are bizarre, you have to ensure that the pages are still technically usable but aesthetically unbearable. Ensure the words and widgets are visible so that lettering should use darker colours like crimson, blue or dark grey on light coloured backgrounds. Pastel the background so that they won't impede the user's sight.
If you wish to defend the reputation for your taste of colours, place a "Contact web master" link which leads to a disclaimer saying your colour scheme is deliberate because you are forcing users to design and submit and vote on a colour scheme. Why not write a cheap lil' web app to facilitate the voting too?
Ask your users. Just that. Just ask them, and take their advice. They're the ones who'll have to be staring at the color scheme for hours or days on end; take their advice.
Update: I'm not suggesting that you give your users the complete range of options; the way this usually works is with a small group of users, generate a few styles of the site that seem reasonable, and ask the small group to pick the one they like the best. That way, there's a coherent look to things, but you still get user input from your end users.
I take you have some users. I suggest asking them what they would like in colors.
Aside from that, to deliver data effectively you have to keep visual clutter to a minimum. Gray is a time-tested agent for helping with that.
I see from your comment that gray is despised. Well, you could spell it "grey" -- British-isms are are classic chic. Seriously, you need to go for three pastels in this situation.
I would say stick to what you're comfortable with and make them grayscale but just add hints and accents of colour.
Adobe Kuler is a good tool for which colours to use.
Stick with greyscale, and use colours only when they can have some meaning. E.g., use bright red for negative dollar amounts, blue for email addresses, bold black text on a yellow background for phone numbers, etc. This sort of thing really helps users find their way around your app, especially when there is alot of information.
Have a look at AVIVADirectory.com
"The Canonical List of Online Color Resources for Designers
(updated periodically with neat stuff)"
Just a massive list of links and resources about pretty colours.
And lets just agree to disagree on the 'u' in colour, ok ; )
Also, a +1 for colorschemedesigner.com mentioned earlier by John Rasch
I asked some friends on the Internet who pretty much represent the userbase for my apps. The general consensus is that certain shades of blue and cyan are nice. Not entirely unlike the default in MSN Messenger 8.5. I then used that to colorize what started as grayscale.
That's where I get my ideas.
I have a couple of pet projects where I'm the sole designer/programmer and I spend too much time changing the user interface to make it easier to use by real users and avoiding bright yellow and green that is so common on "programmer" designs.
Do you have tips to choose a color scheme when you do not have a graphics designer around? How do you avoid creating the typical "programmer" interface?
kuler has a lot of user submitted colour schemes
edit: just remembered... also try colorlovers
Let me tell you a story.
I have absolutely no confidence in my ability to make aesthetic choices - you only have to look at the way I dress to realize I'm justified in my lack of confidence. Anyway, years ago I was put in charge of writing the gui for a new product (the "Clip Editor" in Cineon, for anybody who knows that). I sketched out a design, but asked my boss, the head of sales and marketing, and various "application specialists" for help choosing the colours. Nobody responded, so I said "to hell with it", and chose a colour scheme so ugly I'm sure the beta testers would recoil in horror and demand a change. But they didn't - so it shipped with it. And I heard that customers loved the "bold colours". And not only that, but a few years later a competitor added a program that looked like a direct rip-off of my Clip Editor to their product, and they copied my colour scheme!
For desktop apps, get the colors from the OS. I, personally, want all of my apps to look and feel the same as my OS.
For web apps, I'm not really sure.
Keep in mind that nearly 10% of the male population of the world have some significant form of color blindness. You should always consider this when choosing interface colors (especially if you need capital - guess what? 1 in 10 male investors might not see your red dots on the green background chart showing risk vs return!).
MSDN has a reasonable overview of this, and there are several website filters that show you what your site (or any site) looks like given any form of colorblindness.
Aside from that, I really like COLOURLovers - not only do they have a great selection of user tagged and defined color schemes, they give them to you in a variety of ways, and you can sign in and track your favorites (or your favorite color scheme producers).
Go check out the fall themes! Can't go wrong with Michigan colors when the leaves change...
-Adam
Colour guides like Kuler are a great start if you have no idea about choosing colours.
Some basic considerations:
Use contrast not colour to differentiate in your design. This is to accommodate colour-blindness and poorly sighted users.
Use as limited a colour palette as you can. Pick one colour as your 'theme' and choose shades of that colour, and then maybe one or two contrasting colours to go with it.
Get advice - doesn't have to be from a designer, you might still know someone who has a good eye for these things. Also, more broad feedback - ask a few people for their opinion, that can help.
Lately I have been using the following website: http://www.nickherman.com/colormatch/
to help me (also a non-designer) pick matching color schemes. I usually find a color that is fairly pleasing, then use the matching colors from this website.
If all else fails, I also ask my wife!
I like using ColourSchemer and EasyRGB.
Some updated resources I use:
Colorotate.org is a nicely designed site with user-contributed palettes of various sizes (unlike kuler that provides only 5 colours per palette). It allows you to see how the combinations look to various type of color-impaired people.
colorschemedesigner.com generates consistent palettes for you using various algorithms (complement, triad, tetrad...)
Adobe's Kuler website has a lot of user-created color schemes uploaded by designers. I normally search for higher ranked schemes first.
There are a lot of "color theme pickers" on the web. If you use these, your colors will at least look like they belong together. The first one I looked at on google: http://www.yafla.com/dforbes/yaflaColor/ColorRGBHSL.aspx?
Aim for pastel colours that are slightly dimmer than their full-blown counterparts, i.e. a pastel red is dimmer than a (255,0,0) red for example. Try to select colours from the same palette, one cheaty way of determining colour schemes I use is to take a screenshot of an Office 2007 app, usually excel, and paste out some colours from their co-ordinated palettes using the colour dropper tool in an app like Paint.NET. In fact this cheaty approach to be extended to 'borrowing' colour schemes from applications that are already out there that have colours schemes you admire :-)
If you pick a "theme" color for your app, you can use Kuler to help flesh out the palette.
Related post:
Web 2.0 Color Combinations
I know I've seen more, but can't find them :)
I tend to use alot of grays, along with black and white, keep things simple and avoid any kind of annoying, bright colors. Seems to me like that's what the SO guys did.
Vitaly Friedman's Essential Bookmarks for web designers & web developers list a lot of online color tools, also a condensed version
There is also a list of color tools on twiki.org that has some additional sites.
I recommend you start by reading up on computational color theory. Wikipedia is actually a fine place to educate yourself on the subject. Try looking up a color by name on Wikipedia. You will find more than you expect. Branch out from there until you've got a synopsis of the field.
As you develop your analytic eye, focus on understanding your favorite (or most despised) interface colors and palettes in terms of their various representations in different colorspaces: RGB, HSB, HSL. Keep Photoshop/GIMP open so you can match the subjective experience of palettes to their quantifiable aspects. See how your colors render on lousy monitors. Notice what always remains readable, and which color combos tend to yield uncharismatic or illegible results. Pay attention to the emotional information conveyed by specific palettes. You will quickly see patterns emerge. For example, you will realize that high saturation colors are best avoided in UI components except for special purposes.
Eventually, you'll be able to analyze the output of the palette generators recommended here, and you'll develop your own theories about what makes a good match, and how much contrast is needed to play well on most displays.
(To avoid potential frustration, you might want to skip over to Pantone's free color perception test. It's best taken on a color calibrated display. If it says you have poor color perception, then numeric analysis is extra important for you.)
Why do programmers think they can't have dsign skills? It's a pet peeve of mine. It's a learnable skill, just like anything else.
http://www.hackification.com/2010/05/16/designing-a-vs2010-color-scheme-consistency-consistency-consistency/