The Diffuse Tool is intended for blurring of image borders due to smoothing of difference in color tints of neighboring pixels in the image. It helps to separate small details of the image from large filled areas.

Example of use.

This is the source image. The aim is to separate the area of continues green filling into a black-and-white raster file. Note: the pallet of this archive material consists of only 13 colors.

Most lines comprise alternate pixels of different colors. Selection of any color leads to capture of fragments from undesirable objects.

The first step - Binarization.

After Binarization, the image contains parts of contour lines, inscriptions and the grid ("excess" colors were taken to provide wholeness of areas).

Second stage - Diffusion.

Specify the following parameter values: "Factor" = 82%, "Radius" = 2.

Next operation - Contrast Enchancement

In the resulting image there are some insignificant overshoots at connections of contour lines with the green areas.

Factor

This parameter controls decrease of contrast along color boundaries. If it is 100%, the contrast will be halved, and if it is 0% the image will remain unchanged.

Radius

This parameter controls the area affected by the operation of comparison of neighboring pixels' colors. Too large value of radius causes strong blurring and diffusion of object borders.

This tool is similar to the Diffuse tool.