In most microscopy and other scientific applications, it is not necessary to actually measure the color (if it is, it is necessary to use a spectrophotometer, not a digital camera). The hue-saturation-intensity values of colors may, however, be useful for purposes of feature selection. This interactive tutorial illustrates the counting of objects selected by their colors. In the tutorial, candies were imaged by placing them on a flatbed scanner. Counting based on color required both the hue and intensity values in order to distinguish orange from brown, as shown in the table below.

The tutorial initializes with an image of candies appearing in the left-hand window entitled Specimen Image. Appearing adjacent to the Specimen Image window is a table showing the average color values (as hue, saturation and intensity) of each type of candy. Clicking on each line in the table shows just the selected objects.

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