In
computer graphics
Computer graphics deals with generating images with the aid of computers. Today, computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. A great de ...
, alpha compositing or alpha blending is the process of combining one image with a background to create the appearance of partial or full
transparency. It is often useful to render
picture elements (pixels) in separate passes or layers and then combine the resulting
2D images into a single, final image called the
composite
Composite or compositing may refer to:
Materials
* Composite material, a material that is made from several different substances
** Metal matrix composite, composed of metal and other parts
** Cermet, a composite of ceramic and metallic materials
...
. Compositing is used extensively in
film
A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...
when combining
computer-rendered image elements with
live footage. Alpha blending is also used in 2D computer graphics to put
rasterized
In computer graphics, rasterisation (British English) or rasterization (American English) is the task of taking an Digital image, image described in a vector graphics format (shapes) and converting it into a raster image (a series of pixels, dots ...
foreground elements over a background.
In order to combine the picture elements of the images correctly, it is necessary to keep an associated ''
matte
Matte may refer to:
Art
* paint with a non-glossy finish. See diffuse reflection.
* a framing element surrounding a painting or watercolor within the outer frame
Film
* Matte (filmmaking), filmmaking and video production technology
* Matte pai ...
'' for each element in addition to its color. This matte layer contains the coverage information—the shape of the geometry being drawn—making it possible to distinguish between parts of the image where something was drawn and parts that are empty.
Although the most basic operation of combining two images is to put one over the other, there are many operations, or
blend modes
A blend is a mixture of two or more different things or substances; e.g., a product of a Blender, mixer or blender.
Blend
Blend may also refer to:
* Blend word, a word formed from parts of other words
* Blend (album), ''Blend'' (album), a 1996 ...
, that are used.
Description
In a 2D image a color combination is stored for each picture element (pixel), often a combination of red, green and blue (
RGB
The RGB color model is an additive color model in which the red, green and blue primary colors of light are added together in various ways to reproduce a broad array of colors. The name of the model comes from the initials of the three additiv ...
). When alpha compositing is in use, each pixel has an additional numeric value stored in its alpha channel, with a value ranging from 0 to 1. A value of 0 means that the pixel is fully
transparent
Transparency, transparence or transparent most often refer to:
* Transparency (optics), the physical property of allowing the transmission of light through a material
They may also refer to:
Literal uses
* Transparency (photography), a still, ...
and the color in the pixel beneath will show through. A value of 1 means that the pixel is fully opaque.
With the existence of an alpha channel, it is possible to express compositing image operations using a ''compositing algebra''. For example, given two images ''A'' and ''B'', the most common compositing operation is to combine the images so that ''A'' appears in the foreground and ''B'' appears in the background. This can be expressed as ''A'' over ''B''. In addition to over, Porter and Duff defined the compositing operators in, held out by (the phrase refers to
holdout matting and is usually abbreviated out), atop, and xor (and the reverse operators rover, rin, rout, and ratop) from a consideration of choices in blending the colors of two pixels when their coverage is, conceptually, overlaid orthogonally:
As an example, the over operator can be accomplished by applying the following formula to each pixel:
:
:
Here
,
and
stand for the color components of the pixels in the result, image A and image B respectively, applied to each color channel (red/green/blue) individually, whereas
,
and
are the alpha values of the respective pixels.
The over operator is, in effect, the normal painting operation (see
Painter's algorithm
The painter’s algorithm (also depth-sort algorithm and priority fill) is an algorithm for visible surface determination in 3D computer graphics that works on a polygon-by-polygon basis rather than a pixel-by-pixel, row by row, or area by are ...
). Bruce A. Wallace derived the over operator based on a physical
reflectance
The reflectance of the surface of a material is its effectiveness in reflecting radiant energy. It is the fraction of incident electromagnetic power that is reflected at the boundary. Reflectance is a component of the response of the electronic ...
/
transmittance
Transmittance of the surface of a material is its effectiveness in transmitting radiant energy. It is the fraction of incident electromagnetic power that is transmitted through a sample, in contrast to the transmission coefficient, which is th ...
model, as opposed to Duff's geometrical approach. The in and out operators are the alpha compositing equivalent of
clipping
Clipping may refer to:
Words
* Clipping (morphology), the formation of a new word by shortening it, e.g. "ad" from "advertisement"
* Clipping (phonetics), shortening the articulation of a speech sound, usually a vowel
* Clipping (publications) ...
. The two use only the alpha channel of the second image and ignore the color components.
Straight versus premultiplied
If an alpha channel is used in an image, there are two common representations that are available: straight (unassociated) alpha and premultiplied (associated) alpha.
* With straight alpha, the RGB components represent the color of the object or pixel, disregarding its opacity.
* With premultiplied alpha, the RGB components represent the emission of the object or pixel, and the alpha represents the occlusion. The over operator then becomes:
*:
*:
A more obvious advantage of this is that, in certain situations, it can save a subsequent multiplication (e.g. if the image is used many times during later compositing). However, the most significant advantages of using premultiplied alpha are for correctness and simplicity rather than performance: premultiplied alpha allows correct filtering and blending. In addition, premultiplied alpha allows regions of regular alpha blending and regions with
additive blending mode to be encoded within the same image.
Assuming that the pixel color is expressed using ''straight'' (non-premultiplied) RGBA
tuple
In mathematics, a tuple is a finite ordered list (sequence) of elements. An -tuple is a sequence (or ordered list) of elements, where is a non-negative integer. There is only one 0-tuple, referred to as ''the empty tuple''. An -tuple is defi ...
s, a pixel value of (0, 0.7, 0, 0.5) implies a pixel that has 70% of the maximum green intensity and 50% opacity. If the color were fully green, its RGBA would be (0, 1, 0, 0.5).
However, if this pixel uses premultiplied alpha, all of the RGB values (0, 0.7, 0) are multiplied, or scaled for occlusion, by the alpha value 0.5, which is appended to yield (0, 0.35, 0, 0.5). In this case, the 0.35 value for the G channel actually indicates 70% green emission intensity (with 50% occlusion). A pure green emission would be encoded as (0, 0.5, 0, 0.5). Knowing whether a file uses straight or premultiplied alpha is essential to correctly process or composite it, as a different calculation is required. It is also entirely acceptable to have an RGBA triplet express emission with no occlusion, such as (0.4, 0.3, 0.2, 0.0). Fires and flames, glows, flares, and other such phenomena can only be represented using associated / premultiplied alpha.
The only important difference is in the dynamic range of the color representation in finite precision numerical calculations (which is in all applications): premultiplied alpha has a unique representation for transparent pixels, avoiding the need to choose a "clear color" or resultant artifacts such as edge fringes (see the next paragraphs). In an associated / premultiplied alpha image, the RGB represents the emission amount, while the alpha is occlusion. Premultiplied alpha has some practical advantages over normal alpha blending because
interpolation
In the mathematical field of numerical analysis, interpolation is a type of estimation, a method of constructing (finding) new data points based on the range of a discrete set of known data points.
In engineering and science, one often has a n ...
and
filtering
Filter, filtering or filters may refer to:
Science and technology
Computing
* Filter (higher-order function), in functional programming
* Filter (software), a computer program to process a data stream
* Filter (video), a software component tha ...
give correct results.
Ordinary interpolation without premultiplied alpha leads to RGB information leaking out of fully transparent (A=0) regions, even though this RGB information is ideally invisible. When interpolating or filtering images with abrupt borders between transparent and opaque regions, this can result in borders of colors that were not visible in the original image. Errors also occur in areas of semitransparency because the RGB components are not correctly weighted, giving incorrectly high weighting to the color of the more transparent (lower alpha) pixels.
Premultiplication can reduce the available relative precision in the RGB values when using integer or fixed-point representation for the color components, which may cause a noticeable loss of quality if the color information is later brightened or if the alpha channel is removed. In practice, this is not usually noticeable because during typical composition operations, such as OVER, the influence of the low-precision color information in low-alpha areas on the final output image (after composition) is correspondingly reduced. This loss of precision also makes premultiplied images easier to
compress
compress is a Unix shell compression program based on the LZW compression algorithm. Compared to more modern compression utilities such as gzip and bzip2, compress performs faster and with less memory usage, at the cost of a significantly l ...
using certain compression schemes, as they do not record the color variations hidden inside transparent regions, and can allocate fewer bits to encode low-alpha areas. The same “limitations” of lower quantisation bit depths such as 8 bit per channel are also present in imagery without alpha, and this argument is problematic as a result.
Gamma correction
![Mix precise](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Mix_precise.png)
The RGB values of typical digital images do not directly correspond to the physical light intensities, but are rather compressed by a
gamma correction
Gamma correction or gamma is a nonlinear operation used to encode and decode luminance or tristimulus values in video or still image systems. Gamma correction is, in the simplest cases, defined by the following power-law expression:
: V_\text = ...
function:
:
This transformation better utilizes the limited number of bits in the encoded image by choosing
that better matches the non-linear human perception of luminance.
Accordingly, computer programs that deal with such images must decode the RGB values into a linear space (by undoing the gamma-compression), blend the linear light intensities, and re-apply the gamma compression to the result:
:
When combined with premultiplied alpha, pre-multiplication is done in linear space, prior to gamma compression. This results in the following formula:
:
Note that only the color components undergo gamma-correction; the alpha channel is always linear.
Other transparency methods
Although used for similar purposes,
transparent colors and
image mask
In computer science, a mask or bitmask is data that is used for bitwise operations, particularly in a bit field. Using a mask, multiple bits in a byte, nibble, word, etc. can be set either on or off, or inverted from on to off (or vice versa) i ...
s do not permit the smooth blending of the superimposed image pixels with those of the background (only whole image pixels or whole background pixels allowed).
A similar effect can be achieved with a 1-bit alpha channel, as found in the 16-bit RGBA
high color
High color graphics is a method of storing image information in a computer's memory such that each pixel is represented by two bytes. Usually the color is represented by all 16 bits, but some devices also support 15-bit high color.
More recentl ...
mode of the
Truevision TGA
Truevision TGA, often referred to as TARGA, is a raster graphics file format created by Truevision Inc. (now part of Avid Technology). It was the native format of TARGA and VISTA boards, which were the first graphic cards for IBM-compatible P ...
image file format
An Image file format is a file format for a digital image. There are many formats that can be used, such as JPEG, Portable Network Graphics, PNG, and GIF. Most formats up until 2022 were for storing 2D images, not 3D ones. The data stored in an ...
and related
TARGA
Targa or TARGA may refer to:
Car racing events
* Targa Adelaide, in Australia
* Targa Canada West, in British Columbia
*Targa Florio, in Sicily, Italy, 1906–1977
* Targa Florio Rally, in Sicily, Italy, from 1978
* Targa High Country, in Victori ...
and AT-Vista/NU-Vista display adapters' high color graphic mode. This mode devotes 5 bits for every primary RGB color (
15-bit RGB) plus a remaining bit as the "alpha channel".
Screendoor transparency can be used to simulate partial occlusion where only 1-bit alpha is available.
For some applications, a single alpha channel is not sufficient: a stained-glass window, for instance, requires a separate transparency channel for each RGB channel to model the red, green and blue transparency separately. More alpha channels can be added for accurate spectral color filtration applications.
History
The concept of an alpha channel was introduced by
Alvy Ray Smith
Alvy Ray Smith III (born September 8, 1943) is an American computer scientist who co-founded Lucasfilm's Computer Division and Pixar, participating in the 1980s and 1990s expansion of computer animation into feature film.
Education
In 1965, A ...
and in the late 1970s at the
New York Institute of Technology Computer Graphics Lab
The Computer Graphics Lab was a computer lab located at the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) in the late 1970s and 1980s, founded by Dr. Alexander Schure. It was originally located at the "pink building" on the NYIT campus.
The lab was in ...
, and fully developed in a 1984 paper by
Thomas Porter and
Tom Duff
Tom or TOM may refer to:
* Tom (given name), a diminutive of Thomas or Tomás or an independent Aramaic given name (and a list of people with the name)
Characters
* Tom Anderson, a character in ''Beavis and Butt-Head''
* Tom Beck, a character ...
.
The use of the term ''alpha'' is explained by Smith as follows: "We called it that because of the
classic linear interpolation formula that uses the Greek letter
(alpha) to control the amount of interpolation between, in this case, two images A and B".
That is, when compositing image A atop image B, the value of
in the formula is taken directly from A's alpha channel.
See also
References
External links
Compositing Digital Images - Thomas Porter and Tom Duff (Original Paper)Image Compositing FundamentalsUnderstand Compositing and Color extensions in SVG 1.2 in 30 minutes!Alpha Matting and Premultiplication
{{DEFAULTSORT:Alpha Compositing
Computer graphics algorithms