Ignoring image background¶

Some images contain one or more objects captured on a solid color background. The background region is not very meaningful and usually needs to be ignored. This can be done using the ignore_background and ignore_interior_background options. When ignore_background option is set to true a region containing 75% or more of the image’s edge pixels is considered background region and it is ignored. Regions that have the same color as the background region but are surrounded by one or more non background regions can be ignored as well using ignore_interior_background option.

ignore_background and ignore_interior_background options should be used mostly for image collections containing product shots. These options are not recommended for collections containing images that don’t have solid color backgrounds such as natural images. Also they don’t work for objects that are captured on complex backgrounds.

Note that the best way to eliminate background regions is to set all pixels belonging to those regions as fully transparent. All fully transparent pixels are automatically ignored by our color extraction algorithm. ignore_background and ignore_interior_background options are not needed when transparency is used to mask background regions.

Viewing images¶

It is possible to view your collection images using the MulticolorEngine server and the filepath that you specified when adding the image.

Please note that this feature is not a substitute for storing your own images – you should serve images from your own servers in production. However, accessing your collection images via the API can be useful for troubleshooting, or proof-of-concept applications.

Point your browser to these URLs…

… to view collection images:

/collection/?filepath=<filepath>

Example:

https://multicolorengine.tineye.com/<company>/collection/?filepath=path/folder/image.jpg

The method takes a size parameter if you wish to limit the size at which the image is displayed (the larger dimension will be bound); it has a default of 200px.

Example:

https://multicolorengine.tineye.com/<company>/collection/?filepath=path/folder/image.jpg&size=75