Introduction

In the previous chapter, you learned how to perform basic operations on images and how to access, split, and merge different channels of an image. You also learned how to perform geometric transformations and practiced image translation, rotation, scaling, cropping, and more. In this chapter, you will learn how to enhance the quality of a captured image in order to improve visualization and bring otherwise hidden details into focus. Histogram equalization is used for this purpose.

A histogram is a powerful tool to better understand image content. For example, many cameras display a real-time histogram of the scene that is being captured in order to adjust some parameters of the camera acquisitions, such as exposure time, brightness, or contrast, with the purpose of capturing effective images and detecting image acquisition issues. It helps the photographer see the distribution of captured pixel intensities. In this chapter, we will learn how to plot the histogram of...