Image processing with Go
Programming Snapshot – Go

© Lead Image © Martin Malchev, 123RF.com
Go comes with an image-processing toolkit right out of the box. In this month's column, Mike Schilli explains how to walk through a photo's pixels to detect the foreground by comparing values against a threshold and shows how to manipulate the original by creating a nice looking silhouette.
Until recently, my headshot at the end of every "Programming Snapshot" article showed a much younger version of myself, dating back 15 years, so I grudgingly shot a new one the other day. While doing this, the idea occurred to me to try out my new favorite language Go's suitability for image processing. How hard could it be to generate an artful silhouette of the person shown in the photo?
Of course, with some Gimp skills this could be done quite quickly. However, what is far more interesting is the question of how an image processing program walks through the pixels of Figure 1 and finds out which of them actually belong to the person (the foreground) and which to the lighter background. When a foreground pixel is found, the algorithm can then go ahead and set it to black, which in the digital world means it has its red, green, and blue channels set to 0,0,0
. Easy enough, right?
Finding the Foreground
With a light background and a significantly darker object in the foreground, the program in Listing 1 [1] simply finds all pixels whose brightness lies below a previously defined threshold value and blacks them out completely. The Darken()
function accepts a draw.Image
type structure from line 9, including the width and height of the image in the width
and height
parameters in pixels.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

News
-
openSUSE Tumbleweed Ditches AppArmor for SELinux
If you're an openSUSE Tumbleweed user, you can expect a major change to the distribution.
-
Plasma 6.3 Now Available
Plasma desktop v6.3 has a couple of pretty nifty tricks up its sleeve.
-
LibreOffice 25.2 Has Arrived
If you've been hoping for a release that offers more UI customizations, you're in for a treat.
-
TuxCare Has a Big AlmaLinux 9 Announcement in Store
TuxCare announced it has successfully completed a Security Technical Implementation Guide for AlmaLinux OS 9.
-
First Release Candidate for Linux Kernel 6.14 Now Available
Linus Torvalds has officially released the first release candidate for kernel 6.14 and it includes over 500,000 lines of modified code, making for a small release.
-
System76 Refreshes Meerkat Mini PC
If you're looking for a small form factor PC powered by Linux, System76 has exactly what you need in the Meerkat mini PC.
-
Gnome 48 Alpha Ready for Testing
The latest Gnome desktop alpha is now available with plenty of new features and improvements.
-
Wine 10 Includes Plenty to Excite Users
With its latest release, Wine has the usual crop of bug fixes and improvements, along with some exciting new features.
-
Linux Kernel 6.13 Offers Improvements for AMD/Apple Users
The latest Linux kernel is now available, and it includes plenty of improvements, especially for those who use AMD or Apple-based systems.
-
Gnome 48 Debuts New Audio Player
To date, the audio player found within the Gnome desktop has been meh at best, but with the upcoming release that all changes.