Cognex Expert Guide: When to Choose a Color Vision System for Your Application

Introduction
Imagine only seeing the world in grayscale. So much would be hidden from view. Color opens our eyes to a world of detail. In machine vision technology detail is critical.

Color imaging provides key information that impacts the quality and reliability of many types of inspections on your production line. In this Expert Guide, we will help you understand the difference between grayscale and color vision technology, which applications are best solved with color vision systems and which types of color tools are used for which applications.

Advancements for machine visioncolor inspection
When a vision system captures grayscale images it makes evaluation decisions based on a single grayscale value chosen among the 0-255 shades of gray.

When a vision system captures color images for evaluation, it has three times more data than with grayscale images. So why wouldn’t most users opt for color inspection? Historically, color image processing has been a difficult, slow and costly technique for machine vision system users.

Today, with advancements in machine vision technology, imaging processing software and inspection tools, processing color images is becoming easier, faster and less expensive. Now that color inspection is a more viable option, why and when should you think about using a color vision system?