How to split and merge channels in cv2 – 2024

Today’s blog is going to be a very simple and short blog where we will see how we can input an image and split and merge channels in cv2.

This is going to be a very interesting blog, so without any further due, Let’s do it…

Step 1 – Import the libraries.

import cv2
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

Step 2 – Reading and converting the image.

img = cv2.imread('test.jpg')
img = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2RGB)
input image
Input image

Step 3 – Let’s check the shape of our input image.

print('Shape of input image --> ', img.shape)
split and merge channels
the shape of input image
  • Here we can see that our input image is made up of 3 channels (RGB) each of size 194 X 259.
  • We will be splitting them in the next step

Step 4 – Let’s split and merge channels in cv2.

r, g, b = cv2.split(img)
  • cv2.split(img) splits image into individual channels.
  • Here our image is made of 3 channels RGB, that’s why it is returning 3 values.

Step 5 – Let’s check the shape of individual channels.

print('Shape of red channel --> ', r.shape)
print('Shape of green channel --> ', g.shape)
print('Shape of blue channel --> ', b.shape)
split and merge channels

Step 6 – Let’s plot the results.

images = [cv2.merge((r, g, b)), r, g, b]

plt.subplot(2, 2, 1)
plt.xticks([])
plt.yticks([])
plt.imshow(images[0])
plt.title('original')

plt.subplot(2, 2, 2)
plt.xticks([])
plt.yticks([])
plt.imshow(images[1], cmap='Reds')
plt.title('red')

plt.subplot(2, 2, 3)
plt.xticks([])
plt.yticks([])
plt.imshow(images[2], cmap='Greens')
plt.title('green')

plt.subplot(2, 2, 4)
plt.xticks([])
plt.yticks([])
plt.imshow(images[3], cmap='Blues')
plt.title('blue')

plt.show()
  • cv2.merge() is the exact opposite of the cv2.split().
  • It merges all the channels given as arguments.
split and merge channels
Results

Let’s see the whole code…

import cv2
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

img = cv2.imread('test.jpg')
img = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2RGB)

print('Shape of input image --> ', img.shape)

r, g, b = cv2.split(img)

print('Shape of red channel --> ', r.shape)
print('Shape of green channel --> ', g.shape)
print('Shape of blue channel --> ', b.shape)

images = [cv2.merge((r, g, b)), r, g, b]

plt.subplot(2, 2, 1)
plt.xticks([])
plt.yticks([])
plt.imshow(images[0])
plt.title('original')

plt.subplot(2, 2, 2)
plt.xticks([])
plt.yticks([])
plt.imshow(images[1], cmap='Reds')
plt.title('red')

plt.subplot(2, 2, 3)
plt.xticks([])
plt.yticks([])
plt.imshow(images[2], cmap='Greens')
plt.title('green')

plt.subplot(2, 2, 4)
plt.xticks([])
plt.yticks([])
plt.imshow(images[3], cmap='Blues')
plt.title('blue')

plt.show()

NOTE – Read more about the split and merge channels in cv2 here.

Do let me know if there’s any query regarding split and merge channels in cv2 by contacting me on email or LinkedIn.

So this is all for this blog folks, thanks for reading it and I hope you are taking something with you after reading this and till the next time ?…

Read my previous post: HOW TO PERFORM EDGE DETECTION USING SOBEL X AND SOBEL Y IN PYTHON USING OPENCV

Check out my other machine learning projectsdeep learning projectscomputer vision projectsNLP projectsFlask projects at machinelearningprojects.net.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *