3D visualization of color image histograms

Color quantization is a useful method for obtaining high-quality compressed images for storage and subsequent distribution via the World Wide Web. The first step of most color quantization techniques is to create a histogram of the colors in the truecolor image. The dramatic differences in time and space efficiency of various data structures used to represent truecolor image histograms are visually explored in 3D. Spatial subdivisions use buckets to store colors in a portion of the RGB cube. Linked lists are the typical data structure used for buckets; we propose using red-black trees and treaps. Our visualizations highlight the clustering property of spatial subdivision methods. (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.