Image retrieval by color semantics

The development of a system supporting querying of image databases by color content tackles a major design choice about properties of colors which are referenced within user queries. On the one hand, low-level properties dire ctly reflect numerical features and concepts tied to the machine representa tion of color information. On the other hand, high-level properties address concepts such as the perceptual quality of colors and the sensations that they convey. Color-induced sensations include warmth, accordance or contras t, harmony, excitement, depression, anguish, etc. In other words, they refe r to the semantics of color usage. In particular, paintings are an example where the message is contained more in the high-level color qualities and s patial arrangements than in the physical properties of colors. Starting fro m this observation, Johannes Itten introduced a formalism to analyze the us e of color in art and the effects that this induces on the user's psyche. I n this paper, we present a system which translates the Itten theory into a formal language that expresses the semantics associated with the combinatio n of chromatic properties of color images. The system exploits a competitiv e learning technique to segment images into regions with homogeneous colors . Fuzzy sets are used to represent low-level region properties such as hue, saturation, luminance, warmth, size and position. A formal language and a set of model-checking rules are implemented to define semantic clauses and verify the degree of truth by which they hold over an image.