Color image pipeline
An image pipeline or video pipeline is the set of components commonly used between an image source, and an image renderer, or for performing any intermediate digital image processing consisting of two or more separate processing blocks. An image/video pipeline may be implemented as computer software, in a digital signal processor, on an FPGA, or as fixed-function ASIC. In addition, analog circuits can be used to do many of the same functions.
Typical components include image sensor corrections, noise reduction, image scaling, gamma correction, image enhancement, colorspace conversion, chroma subsampling, framerate conversion, image compression/video compression, and computer data storage/data transmission.
Typical goals of an imaging pipeline may be perceptually pleasing end-results, colorimetric precision, a high degree of flexibility, low cost/low CPU utilization/long battery life, or reduction in bandwidth/file size.
Some functions may be algorithmically linear. Mathematically, those elements can be connected in any order without changing the end-result. As digital computers use a finite approximation to numerical computing, this is in practice not true. Other elements may be non-linear or time-variant. For both cases, there is often one or a few sequences of components that makes sense for optimum precision as well as minimum hardware-cost/CPU-load.
