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Color Components and Premultiplied Alpha

Premultiplied alpha is a term used to describe a source color, the components of which have already been multiplied by an alpha value. Premultiplying speeds up the rendering of an image by eliminating the need to perform a multiplication operation for each color component. For example, in an RGB color space, rendering an image with premultiplied alpha eliminates three multiplication operations (red times alpha, green times alpha, and blue times alpha) for each pixel in the image.

Filter creators must supply Core Image with color components that are premultiplied by the alpha value. Otherwise, the filter behaves as if the alpha value for a color component is 1.0. Making sure color components are premultiplied is important for filters that manipulate color.

By default, Core Image assumes that processing nodes are 128 bits-per-pixel, linear light, premultiplied RGBA floating-point values that use the GenericRGB color space. You can specify a different working color space by providing a Quartz 2D CGColorSpace object. Note that the working color space must be RGB-based. If you have YUV data as input (or other data that is not RGB-based), you can use ColorSync functions to convert to the working color space. (See Quartz 2D Programming Guide for information on creating and using CGColorspace objects.)

With 8-bit YUV 4:2:2 sources, Core Image can process 240 HD layers per gigabyte. Eight-bit YUV is the native color format for video source such as DV, MPEG, uncompressed D1, and JPEG. You need to convert YUV color spaces to an RGB color space for Core Image.

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