I need to convert an RGB color image to grayscale, but keeping all three channels. I am currently using the openCV function:
cv2.cvtColor(imagen, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
But of course, that one returns it to me in a lower number of channels. Is there a way to convert the image to grayscale but still have all 3 channels?
I have the image of a flower:
You convert it to gray, which effectively removes the RGB fields and changes it to grayscale.
What you need to do to convert it to three channels is convert it back to RGB:
Why is the image still grayscale?
Once you convert the image from RGB to grayscale, there is no going back. Yes, it becomes a single channel (indicating the value of white for each pixel), and to convert it, the only thing that is done is to pass that channel (let's say that in a pixel its value in gray scale is 50) to the 3 channels of RGB (that would be rgb(50,50,50)), which gives you the same gray color, only represented as the sum of red, green, and blue, instead of a percentage of white.
To check it, we can see the channels of the converted RGB image:
So we can verify that it is a grayscale image represented with RGB channels.