Extending - Boost.GIL documentation

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# Extending

## Overview

You can define your own pixel iterators, locators, image views, images, channel types, color spaces and algorithms. You can make virtual images that live on the disk, inside a jpeg file, somewhere on the internet, or even fully-synthetic images such as the Mandelbrot set. As long as they properly model the corresponding concepts, they will work with any existing GIL code. Most such extensions require no changes to the library and can thus be supplied in another module.

## Defining new color spaces

Each color space is in a separate file. To add a new color space, just copy one of the existing ones (like rgb.hpp) and change it accordingly. If you want color conversion support, you will have to provide methods to convert between it and the existing color spaces (see color_convert.h). For convenience you may want to provide useful typedefs for pixels, pointers, references and images with the new color space (see typedefs.h).

## Defining new channel types

Most of the time you don’t need to do anything special to use a new channel type. You can just use it:

    typedef pixel<double,rgb_layout_t>   rgb64_pixel_t;    // 64 bit RGB pixel
    typedef rgb64_pixel*                 rgb64_pixel_ptr_t;// pointer to 64-bit interleaved data
    typedef image_type<double,rgb_layout_t>::type rgb64_image_t;    // 64-bit interleaved image

If you want to use your own channel class, you will need to provide a specialization of `channel_traits` for it (see channel.hpp). If you want to do conversion between your and existing channel types, you will need to provide an overload of `channel_convert`.

## Overloading color conversion

Suppose you want to provide your own color conversion. For example, you may want to implement higher quality color conversion using color profiles. Typically you may want to redefine color conversion only in some instances and default to GIL’s color conversion in all other cases. Here is, for example, how to overload color conversion so that color conversion to gray inverts the result but everything else remains the same:

    // make the default use GIL's default
    template <typename SrcColorSpace, typename DstColorSpace>
    struct my_color_converter_impl
    : public default_color_converter_impl<SrcColorSpace,DstColorSpace> {};

    // provide specializations only for cases you care about
    // (in this case, if the destination is grayscale, invert it)
    template <typename SrcColorSpace>
    struct my_color_converter_impl<SrcColorSpace,gray_t>
    {
      template <typename SrcP, typename DstP>  // Model PixelConcept
      void operator()(const SrcP& src, DstP& dst) const
      {
          default_color_converter_impl<SrcColorSpace,gray_t>()(src,dst);
          get_color(dst,gray_color_t())=channel_invert(get_color(dst,gray_color_t()));
      }
    };

    // create a color converter object that dispatches to your own implementation
    struct my_color_converter
    {
      template <typename SrcP, typename DstP>  // Model PixelConcept
      void operator()(const SrcP& src,DstP& dst) const
      {
          typedef typename color_space_type<SrcP>::type SrcColorSpace;
          typedef typename color_space_type<DstP>::type DstColorSpace;
          my_color_converter_impl<SrcColorSpace,DstColorSpace>()(src,dst);
      }
    };

GIL color conversion functions take the color converter as an optional parameter. You can pass your own color converter:

    color_converted_view<gray8_pixel_t>(img_view,my_color_converter());

## Defining new image views

You can provide your own pixel iterators, locators and views, overriding either the mechanism for getting from one pixel to the next or doing an arbitrary pixel transformation on dereference. For example, let’s look at the implementation of `color_converted_view` (an image factory method that, given any image view, returns a new, otherwise identical view, except that color conversion is performed on pixel access). First we need to define a model of `PixelDereferenceAdaptorConcept`; a function object that will be called when we dereference a pixel iterator. It will call `color_convert` to convert to the destination pixel type:

    template <typename SrcConstRefP,  // const reference to the source pixel
            typename DstP>          // Destination pixel value (models PixelValueConcept)
    class color_convert_deref_fn
    {
    public:
      typedef color_convert_deref_fn const_t;
      typedef DstP                value_type;
      typedef value_type          reference;      // read-only dereferencing
      typedef const value_type&   const_reference;
      typedef SrcConstRefP        argument_type;
      typedef reference           result_type;
      static bool constexpr is_mutable = false;

      result_type operator()(argument_type srcP) const {
          result_type dstP;
          color_convert(srcP,dstP);
          return dstP;
      }
    };

We then use the `add_deref` member struct of image views to construct the type of a view that invokes a given function object (`deref_t`) upon dereferencing. In our case, it performs color conversion:

    template <typename SrcView, typename DstP>
    struct color_converted_view_type
    {
    private:
      typedef typename SrcView::const_t::reference src_pix_ref;  // const reference to pixel in SrcView
      typedef color_convert_deref_fn<src_pix_ref, DstP> deref_t; // the dereference adaptor that performs color conversion
      typedef typename SrcView::template add_deref<deref_t> add_ref_t;
    public:
      typedef typename add_ref_t::type type; // the color converted view type
      static type make(const SrcView& sv) { return add_ref_t::make(sv, deref_t()); }
    };

Finally our `color_converted_view` code simply creates color-converted view from the source view:

    template <typename DstP, typename View> inline
    typename color_converted_view_type<View,DstP>::type color_convert_view(const View& src)
    {
      return color_converted_view_type<View,DstP>::make(src);
    }

(The actual color convert view transformation is slightly more complicated, as it takes an optional color conversion object, which allows users to specify their own color conversion methods.) See the GIL tutorial for an example of creating a virtual image view that defines the Mandelbrot set.