Image overlay
The function IMOVERLAY creates a mask-based image overlay. It takes input image and a binary mask, and it produces an output image whose masked pixels have been replaced by a specified color.
NOTE: This original implementation of IMOVERLAY was superseded in R2016a by a new function, with the same name, in the Image Processing Toolbox. The version here has been renamed to IMOVERLAY_OLD.
Cite As
Steve Eddins (2021). Image overlay (https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/10502-image-overlay), MATLAB Central File Exchange. Retrieved .
Comments and Ratings (57)
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- Industries > Biotech and Pharmaceutical > Genomics and Next Generation Sequencing >
- Image Processing and Computer Vision > Image Processing Toolbox > Image Segmentation and Analysis > Image Segmentation > Color Segmentation >
- Image Processing and Computer Vision > Image Processing Toolbox > Image Filtering and Enhancement > Image Arithmetic >
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Acknowledgements
Inspired: JalaliLabUCLA/Image-feature-detection-using-Phase-Stretch-Transform, Image Sequence Display and Overlay with Binary Mask, Multi wall (COST231) Signal Propagation Models + Python Code, Visualization of multi-modal volume segmentation, 3D Ray Tracing For Indoor Radio Propagation, imagescnan.m v2.1 (Aug 2009), flattenMaskOverlay, ALPHAMASK: semi-transparent image overlay, Neuron counting, TeloTool - Terminal Restriction Fragment Analysis
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Do it work in matlab15
Steve-Not with the function as is. You'd need to modify it to do the blending math.
This worked really well for me - but i would like to control the transparency of the overlay - is there an easy way of doing this?
thank you, is working
Gabriel-Jonathan, do you mean you want the output to be uint16? Then modify the code inside the function to call im2uint16 instead of im2uint8.
Everything runs smoothly and well. However is there a way to make this work on a 16 bit image?
How to make it work for 16 bit image. I am working on 16 bit medical image.
Easy to understand and use. Works as expected. Thanks Steve!
Awesome... Thanks Eddins.. It helped me a lot... It Works so well now...
Shajahan - this imoverlay.m has fewer than 134 lines in it, and it does not call imagesc. You must be using somebody else's imoverlay.m.
Sorry. It does not work for me. Can anyone help me how to make it work?
I am trying to use your same image and same code as you showed in the cell segmentation demo. I am getting following errors.
Error using image
Incorrect number of arguments.
Error in imagesc (line 39)
hh = image(varargin{:},'CDataMapping','scaled');
Error in imoverlay (line 134)
hF = imagesc(F,climF);
Error in celltry (line 12)
overlay1 = imoverlay(I_eq, bw4_perim, [.3 1 .3]);
Awesome!
Thanks!
It was great. Keep up the good work. Thumbs up.
Image Analyst, thanks for your comments. I like your suggestion about accepting the output of bwboundaries as the 2nd input argument. I don't really understand your comment about bwperim, though.
bwperim is not the only way to create outlines. It would be nice if imoverlay were smart enough to see if the input was a binary image, or a cell array that is the output of bwboundaries. A lot of times we threshold and then call bwboundaries. It would be a nice enhancement if it could take the output of bwboundaries as the location of the outlines to draw.
Andrew, you'll have to either pad or resize one of the images to match the other size to overlay them using this function. You could also consider using MATLAB graphics transparency features to overlay one image on another.
Very good tool. Is there any way you can overlay two images that are different sized without one of them becoming dis-formed?
I'd like to use this function visualize the clipped pixels (e.g. with value 256 in 8bit grayscale) in red, in the preview of a camera recording.
its possible to apply an arbitrary function to each video frame before its displayed in the preview with this:
setappdata(videoHandle,'UpdatePreviewWindowFcn',@some_function);
however, I havent been able to combine this with imoverlay. Any suggestions??
Lasse - thanks, I have uploaded a new version based on your suggestion.
This might help to some people
out_red(logical(mask)) = color_uint8(1);
out_green(logical(mask)) = color_uint8(2);
out_blue(logical(mask)) = color_uint8(3);
Hope it helps..
I am not able to implement it. How should I use this function in my program?
is it i can find the upper and lower pixel value of my region..............
thanks. used in my code. will upload soon
This code was great.heyy i want the canny edge borders to be black.now they are in green colour.how to get that???
Great work! saved me some precious time...
This is an excellent bit of code. It worked perfectly fine in my case.
that's an excellent piece of code.
Great tool. Now I can paint NaN's in black on imagesc.
Thanks
Great tool work very well for what a needed to do.
Matt - I added a note and an example to the documentation based on your suggestion. Thanks!
great and loved it
Simple, useful and well styled and coded. Did something in my existing code similar but this is a bit faster and less memory. Steve, you might want to note in the documentation that if you have a double input outside the range of 0-1 (soemthing you typically use imagesc to display) that you would want to run mat2gray on it before passing to this function. A useful further enhancement would be either to auto detect and apply this or have an optional switch.
Works great. Saves me a few lines of code! :) Thanks.
I think it works great. Thnx
I would like to overlay a picture which is not bw.
??? Subscript indices must either be real positive integers or logicals.
Error in ==> imoverlay at 54
out_red(mask) = color_uint8(1);