specular_free_transform — SPECULAR dichromatic op

Data kinds: rgbimagergbimage

Call: import specularity; specularity.specular_free_transform(image_rgb, illuminant_rgb=(1.0, 1.0, 1.0)) (or opsspecular.get("specular_free_transform"))

Usage

Project out the illuminant direction: the part of the image a highlight cannot touch. → (H, W, 3).

`I - (I.G) G for the unit illuminant colour G`. Under the dichromatic

model the interface term is `m_s * G`, so it lies entirely in the removed

direction and the result is invariant to any specular term whatsoever

exactly, for any lobe shape, any strength, any spatial pattern. That is the

specular-invariant subspace of Mallick et al. (2005); this operator is the

projection itself, with no rotation into named channels, so it stays in RGB

and composes with the rest of the family.

Use it when the *shape* of the specular lobe is unknown or the surface is

textured — feature matching, edge detection and correlation all work in this

subspace without any of the assumptions

:func:specular_diffuse_split needs.

This is a projection, not a picture. The result loses one of three

degrees of freedom (its component along `G` is exactly zero everywhere)

and, for an image with negative values after black-level subtraction, keeps

them. It is not a displayable "highlight-removed photo" and does not claim

to be; for that, use :func:specular_diffuse_split.

Raises `ValueError: *image_rgb* is not a valid (H, W, 3)` linear

RGB image (see :func:specular_diffuse_split); *illuminant_rgb* is not a

non-zero 3-vector.

Detailed usage guide

specular_photometric family guide

References (sample data, literature)

• Sample-data catalog (download URLs / licences) — 2-D uses skimage.data (BSD/public domain) plus synthetic images; 3-D lists download URLs for real data sources (Stanford, PDS, …).

• Operator provenance and references — the sources of the research/methods this op family came from.

• The canonical algorithm (author, year) and its uses are named in the family usage guide above.

Runnable examples (verified samples that actually call this op)

specular_photometricpy -3.11 examples/specular_photometric.py

Ops the type connects to (they accept rgbimage as input)

specular_diffuse_split · specular_coefficient_map · illuminant_from_dichromatic_planes

Same category (dichromatic)

specular_diffuse_split · specular_coefficient_map · illuminant_from_dichromatic_planes


*Provenance: specularity.py — SPECULAR operator registry. This per-op note is generated by tools/opdocs.py md (do not hand-edit).*

© 2026 Kazufumi Furuse — Fullseye operator documentation. Licensed under Apache-2.0.