# Is there a way to measure each pixel's content in an image somehow?

Is there a way to measure each pixel's content in an image somehow?

Like can I interpret each color as some kind of a single value, rather than a triplet?

Perhaps I can think of them as $\mathbb{R}^3$ vectors and then e.g. take their norms?

• There are probably a hundred ways to do what you're asking. If you explain why you need this, or what is the problem you're trying to solve, someone might be able to point you in the right direction. – MBaz May 23 '18 at 17:08
• @MBaz I'm just interested in extracting different sorts of signals from an image. That's $1 \times n$ vectors of numeric values. – mavavilj May 23 '18 at 17:29
• Then your problem is trivial. You can do anything you want. – MBaz May 23 '18 at 18:13
• @MBaz Yeah, but of course it's easier to not have to refigure what kinds of signals there are in a RGB image. In practice there are many kinds though, because of course one can always apply more and more transformations to get more and more signals. However, I want to retain some connection to how the image looks. That is, that the signal corresponds to something visible in the image. – mavavilj May 23 '18 at 18:15
• I would want to start from e.g. making a measure of "color" that's a single real value, rather than a triplet. Then I could perhaps want to make a function that calculates the "change in" color between pixels adjacent to each other. So a derivative of some kind. – mavavilj May 23 '18 at 18:17