Chapter 1. Fun with Filters

The goal of this chapter is to develop a number of image processing filters and apply them to the video stream of a webcam in real time. These filters will rely on various OpenCV functions to manipulate matrices through splitting, merging, arithmetic operations, and applying lookup tables for complex functions.

The three effects are as follows:

OpenCV is such an advanced toolchain that often the question is not how to implement something from scratch, but rather which pre-canned implementation to choose for your needs. Generating complex effects is not hard if you have a lot of computing resources to spare. The challenge usually lies in finding an approach that not only gets the job done, but also gets it done in time.

Instead of teaching the basic concepts of image manipulation through theoretical lessons, we will take a practical approach and develop a single end-to-end app that integrates a number of image filtering techniques. We will apply our theoretical knowledge to arrive at a solution that not only works but also speeds up seemingly complex effects so that a laptop can produce them in real time.

The following screenshot shows the final outcome of the three effects running on a laptop: