ArticlePeerJ2019
Quantitative color profiling of digital images with earth mover's distance using the R package colordistance.
Article in PeerJ, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers.
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Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed, 97 citations in OpenAlex.
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- PUPMCR: an R package for image-based identification of color based on Rayner's (1970) terminology and known fungal pigments.Biology methods & protocols · 2025Article
- Four years monitoring of the endangered European plethodontid salamanders.Scientific data · 2024Article
- Fluorescent proteins generate a genetic color polymorphism and counteract oxidative stress in intertidal sea anemones.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Increasing the impact of vertebrate scientific collections through 3D imaging: The openVertebrate (oVert) Thematic Collections Network.Bioscience · 2024Review
- Analysing biological colour patterns from digital images: An introduction to the current toolbox.Ecology and evolution · 2024Review
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- Evolutionary predictors of the specific colors of birds.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Eco-physiological Responses of Aquatic Fungi to Three Global Change Stressors Highlight the Importance of Intraspecific Trait Variability.Microbial ecology · 2023Article
- Article
- Repeated evolution of blanched coloration in a lizard across independent white-sand habitats.Ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- Intraspecific variation reshapes coral assemblages under elevated temperature and acidity.Ecology letters · 2022Article
- Correlated evolution between colour conspicuousness and drum speed in woodpeckers.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
- A plant-based diet supplemented with Hermetia illucens alone or in combination with poultry by-product meal: one step closer to sustainable aquafeeds for European seabass.Journal of animal science and biotechnology · 2022Article
- Perceptual and Semantic Representations at Encoding Contribute to True and False Recognition of Objects.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2021Article
- Regional heterogeneity in coral species richness and hue reveals novel global predictors of reef fish intra-family diversity.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Using Delaunay triangulation to sample whole-specimen color from digital images.Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Biological color may be adaptive or incidental, seasonal or permanent, species- or population-specific, or modified for breeding, defense or camouflage. Although color is a hugely informative aspect of biology, quantitative color comparisons are notoriously difficult. Color comparison is limited by categorization methods, with available tools requiring either subjective classifications, or expensive equipment, software, and expertise. We present an R package for processing images of organisms (or other objects) in order to quantify color profiles, gather color trait data, and compare color palettes on the basis of color similarity and amount. The package treats image pixels as 3D coordinates in a "color space," producing a multidimensional color histogram for each image. Pairwise distances between histograms are computed using earth mover's distance, a technique borrowed from computer vision, that compares histograms using transportation costs. Users choose a color space, parameters for generating color histograms, and a pairwise comparison method to produce a color distance matrix for a set of images. The package is intended as a more rigorous alternative to subjective, manual digital image analyses, not as a replacement for more advanced techniques that rely on detailed spectrophotometry methods unavailable to many users. Here, we outline the basic functions of colordistance, provide guidelines for the available color spaces and quantification methods, and compare this toolkit with other available methods. The tools presented for quantitative color analysis may be applied to a broad range of questions in biology and other disciplines.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.