This post was written by Deja Bond, the Kathryn Turner Diversity and Technology Intern in the Smithsonian Libraries’ Web Services Department. Deja is an undergraduate Computer Science student at Spelman College. Her work this summer consisted of developing techniques to create data for enhancing the Libraries’ forthcoming Image Gallery re-launch later this year.
My project was to design and code an algorithm to identify the predominant colors within an image. When someone performs a search in the Image Gallery (an online collection of images from Smithsonian Libraries books, still in beta), they are able to refine their search by subject, creator and publication date. The goal was to add another option for color. The big question was: how would I design and implement an algorithm that would return the predominant colors within an image for over 14,000 images sufficiently?
