Presenting Technique for the Quantitative Evaluation of Image Color Reduction Algorithms by Explaining a Practical Sample

In color reduction algorithms the result will be evaluated based on visual or qualitative standards. Evaluation without considering the quantitative standard wouldnt be a complete and accurate evaluation and trends of viewer are very effective on the evaluation. In some articles, the result will be evaluated with MSE. In this standard error the difference between the final images’ pixels color with first image will be considered as a failure in which is not a suitable technique for evaluating of color reduction methods. In images color reduction, if a color completely be replaced by a color closed to the original color it wouldn’t be considered as a failure. If these replacements don’t happen for all of those specific color pixels, then an error has happened in color reduction. The disintegration of the resulted colors from color reduction algorithm with desired colors should be considered in presenting the evaluation criteria since this will not be considered in MSE. In some of color reduction applications such as color reduction in the carpet cartoons, the final desired pixel color is specified and presenting the wrong color will be an error. Therefore, in such applications, the quantitative evaluation based on final color of each pixel is possible. By presenting criteria for quantitative evaluation, viewer trends wouldnt be considered in evaluation and the possibility of accurate comparison of color reduction algorithms would take place. In this article, we have presented a technique of quantitative evaluation for color reduction algorithms. When the final desired color for pixels are specified, this criteria would work out. To demonstrate the functionality of this quantitative evaluation technique, one of the applications of color reduction which is color reduction in carpet cartoons would be discussed. Several methods of color reduction would be evaluated based on proposed evaluation criteria and reference [42], had the lowest error.