Color scheme detection

  • Article

Azure AI Vision analyzes the colors in an image to provide three different attributes: the dominant foreground color, the dominant background color, and the larger set of dominant colors in the image. The set of possible returned colors is: black, blue, brown, gray, green, orange, pink, purple, red, teal, white, and yellow.

Azure AI Vision also extracts an accent color, which represents the most vibrant color in the image, based on a combination of the dominant color set and saturation. The accent color is returned as a hexadecimal HTML color code (for example, 00CC00).

Azure AI Vision also returns a boolean value indicating whether the image is a black-and-white image.

Color scheme detection examples

The following example illustrates the JSON response returned by Azure AI Vision when it detects the color scheme of an image.

Note

In this case, the example image is not a black and white image, but the dominant foreground and background colors are black, and the dominant colors for the image as a whole are black and white.

Outdoor Mountain at sunset, with a person's silhouette

{
    "color": {
        "dominantColorForeground": "Black",
        "dominantColorBackground": "Black",
        "dominantColors": ["Black", "White"],
        "accentColor": "BB6D10",
        "isBwImg": false
    },
    "requestId": "0dc394bf-db50-4871-bdcc-13707d9405ea",
    "metadata": {
        "height": 202,
        "width": 300,
        "format": "Jpeg"
    }
}

Dominant color examples

The following table shows the returned foreground, background, and image colors for each sample image.

Image Dominant colors
A white flower with a green background Foreground: Black
Background: White
Colors: Black, White, Green
A train running through a station Foreground: Black
Background: Black
Colors: Black

Accent color examples

The following table shows the returned accent color, as a hexadecimal HTML color value, for each example image.

Image Accent color
A person standing on a mountain rock at sunset #BB6D10
A white flower with a green background #C6A205
A train running through a station #474A84

Black and white detection examples

The following table shows Azure AI Vision's black and white evaluation in the sample images.

Image Black & white?
A black and white picture of buildings in Manhattan true
A blue house and the front yard false

Use the API

The color scheme detection feature is part of the Analyze Image 3.2 API. You can call this API through a native SDK or through REST calls. Include Color in the visualFeatures query parameter. Then, when you get the full JSON response, simply parse the string for the contents of the "color" section.