Convert BGRA Image to Grayscale with Accelerate vImage
This method is meant to illustrate getting Accelerate's vImage use in converting BGR images to grayscale. Your image may very well be in RGBA format and you'll need to adjust the matrix accordingly, but the camera outputs BGRA so I'm using it here. The values in the matrix are the same values used in OpenCV for cvtColor, there are other values you might play with like luminosity. I assume you malloc the appropriate amount of memory for the result. In the case of grayscale it is only 1-channel or 1/4 the memory used for BGRA. If anyone finds issues with this code please leave a comment.
Performance note
Converting to grayscale in this way may NOT be the fastest. You should check the performance of any method in your environment. Brad Larson's GPUImage might be faster, or even OpenCV's cvtColor. In any case you will want to remove the calls to malloc and free for the intermediate buffers and manage them for the app lifecycle. Otherwise, the function call will be dominated by the malloc and free. Apple's docs recommend reusing the whole vImage_Buffer when possible.
You can also read about solving the same problem with NEON intrinsics.
Finally, the fastest method is not converting at all. If you're getting image data from the device camera the device camera is natively in the kCVPixelFormatType_420YpCbCr8BiPlanarFullRange format. Meaning, grabbing the first plane's data (Y-Channel, luma) is the fastest way to get grayscale.
BGRA to Grayscale
- (void)convertBGRAFrame:(const CLPBasicVideoFrame &)bgraFrame toGrayscale:(CLPBasicVideoFrame &)grayscaleFrame
{
vImage_Buffer bgraImageBuffer = {
.width = bgraFrame.width,
.height = bgraFrame.height,
.rowBytes = bgraFrame.bytesPerRow,
.data = bgraFrame.rawPixelData
};
void *intermediateBuffer = malloc(bgraFrame.totalBytes);
vImage_Buffer intermediateImageBuffer = {
.width = bgraFrame.width,
.height = bgraFrame.height,
.rowBytes = bgraFrame.bytesPerRow,
.data = intermediateBuffer
};
int32_t divisor = 256;
// int16_t a = (int16_t)roundf(1.0f * divisor);
int16_t r = (int16_t)roundf(0.299f * divisor);
int16_t g = (int16_t)roundf(0.587f * divisor);
int16_t b = (int16_t)roundf(0.114f * divisor);
const int16_t bgrToGray[4 * 4] = { b, 0, 0, 0,
g, 0, 0, 0,
r, 0, 0, 0,
0, 0, 0, 0 };
vImage_Error error;
error = vImageMatrixMultiply_ARGB8888(&bgraImageBuffer, &intermediateImageBuffer, bgrToGray, divisor, NULL, NULL, kvImageNoFlags);
if (error != kvImageNoError) {
NSLog(@"%s, vImage error %zd", __PRETTY_FUNCTION__, error);
}
vImage_Buffer grayscaleImageBuffer = {
.width = grayscaleFrame.width,
.height = grayscaleFrame.height,
.rowBytes = grayscaleFrame.bytesPerRow,
.data = grayscaleFrame.rawPixelData
};
void *scratchBuffer = malloc(grayscaleFrame.totalBytes);
vImage_Buffer scratchImageBuffer = {
.width = grayscaleFrame.width,
.height = grayscaleFrame.height,
.rowBytes = grayscaleFrame.bytesPerRow,
.data = scratchBuffer
};
error = vImageConvert_ARGB8888toPlanar8(&intermediateImageBuffer, &grayscaleImageBuffer, &scratchImageBuffer, &scratchImageBuffer, &scratchImageBuffer, kvImageNoFlags);
if (error != kvImageNoError) {
NSLog(@"%s, vImage error %zd", __PRETTY_FUNCTION__, error);
}
free(intermediateBuffer);
free(scratchBuffer);
}
CLPBasicVideoFrame.h - For reference
typedef struct
{
size_t width;
size_t height;
size_t bytesPerRow;
size_t totalBytes;
unsigned long pixelFormat;
void *rawPixelData;
} CLPBasicVideoFrame;
I got through the grayscale conversion, but was having trouble with the quality when I found this book on the web called Instant OpenCV for iOS. I personally picked up a copy and it has a number of gems, although the code is bit of a mess. On the bright-side it is a very reasonably priced eBook.
I'm very curious about that matrix. I toyed around with it for hours trying to figure out what the arrangement should be. I would have thought the values should be on the diagonal, but the Instant OpenCV guys put it as above.
