How to count the colors in a image ?

M
Posted By
Maryo
Jan 18, 2004
Views
450
Replies
9
Status
Closed
There is a way to precise count how many colors there are in a color 8bit rgb image ?

Thanks for any help.

Mario
Related Tags
color how image

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JS
John_Slate
Jan 18, 2004
If there are less than 256, choosing image>mode>indexed color… will give you a count. Beyond that, the most possible would be 16,777,216. How to count them is beyond me.
DP
Daryl_Pritchard
Jan 19, 2004
Maryo,

Photoshop doesn’t offer the capability to count the colors used in an image. The easiest, and cheapest, way to do that is to download and install the freeware application IrfanView from <http://www.irfanview.com>. Open the image in IrfanView and go to Image > Count Colors.

Regards,

Daryl
M
Maryo
Jan 19, 2004
Thanks both John and Daryl for the information, I will try the Irfanview way.
MM
Mac_McDougald
Jan 19, 2004
PaintShopPro will do it also.
Interestingly, the two proggies never agree on the number, though.

Mac
SA
Sven-Martin_Adelhoff
Jan 19, 2004
There’s a PS plugin called ColorCounter.8bf

<http://www.users.cloud9.net/~gparet/photoshop/>
M
Maryo
Jan 21, 2004
Thanks also to mac and Sven!
DJ
dennis_johnson
Jan 21, 2004
Just out of curiosity, why do you want/need to know the number of colors in an image? I only ask because – other than in the case of an indexed-color image – I can’t come up with a practical reason for needing to know, or in what way having this information would solve a problem. Can you fill me in?
SA
Sven-Martin_Adelhoff
Jan 22, 2004
Dennis,

for me, it’s just curiosity. When I began digital imaging I could not imagine why the 256 colours of GIF are not enough (with a watercolor palette of only 12 colours you can do a lot!).

I then quickly found out that a picture consists of 10 or 100’s of thousands of different colours, even if I take a picture of only green grass.

But you are right, I do not use this information in my daily workflow.

Sven
JS
John_Slate
Jan 22, 2004
with a watercolor palette of only 12 colours you can do a lot!

Provided you MIX them. Then how many colors do you have?

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