Copy part of an RGB image to another

Hi,

I am looking for a method to copy part of an RGB image to another. The only way that I have found is to use a double for and copy pixel by pixel:

c1 = imread('car1.jpg');
c2 = imread('car2.jpg');

x = 500;
y = 700;

idx = zeros(size(c1,1),size(c1,2));
idx((y-200):(y+200),(x-300):(x+300)) = 1;
idx = logical(idx);

[row, col] = size(idx);

%Works but it is slow and ugly
for r = 1:row
    for c = 1:col
        if(idx(r,c))
            rgb = c2(r,c,:);
            c1(r,c,:) = rgb;
        end
    end
end

%c1(idx) = c2(idx); Not works
%c1(idx,:) = c2(idx,:); return error

imshow(c1);

Is there an elegant and faster way to implement it? Thanks

Answer 1

[Guillaume]

I really don't understand why you went with this very roundabout code, very little of it makes any sense:

e.g:

idx = zeros(size(c1,1),size(c2,2));

creates a vector with the same number of rows as c1 and the same numbers of columns as c2. Why the inconsistency?

Why create a logical array? Why iterate over all the rows and columns including the ones you don't want to copy when you already know the range you want to copy?

The whole thing can be simplified to:

c1(y-200:y+200, x-300:x+300, :) = c2(y-200:y+200, x-300:x+300, :);

[youngz]

I recreate a small part of the program and the first part of data (i.e., c1, c2, and idx) are not data created by me, but they are variables that have been loaded.

For

idx = zeros(size(c1,1),size(c2,2));

it is my error. Anyway the two images have the same dimension..

[Guillaume]

Oh, ok. Then you should have made clear what you wanted us to start with. So, my understanding is that you have 3 arrays, c1 and c2 are 3D matrices of the same size representing images, and idx is a logical array indicating which pixels to copy. In that case:

rgbmask = repmat(idx, 1, 1, 3);   %replicate pixel mask across all 3 colour channels
c2(rgbmask) = c1(rgbmask);        %copy pixels indicated by the mask

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Note: constructing your idx could have been done more simply with:

idx = false(size(c1, 1), size(c1, 2));
idx(y-200:y+200, x-300:x+300) = true;