acquire black/white from color camera

[L_K]

I have a color camera and would like to acquire image in black/white. I want to tried grabbing image in black and white because I want to increase speed of the program. I tried changing the format of the image from RGB to float when creating an image (IMAQ create image), it worked but the program worked so slow. My questions are:
1. Can you suggest me how to make it faster?
2. Does aquiring image in black and white instead of color (RGB) help increase speed of the program?

[BruceAmmons]

Irene,

I will assume you are using the PCI-1411 board for your acquisition. In MAX, you can select what the output is. Your options are a full color image, the different color planes (R,G,B) or the HSI color planes. I would select Intensity to get a grayscale image. The conversion will be done on the board, which is fast. In your program, use a standard 8 bit image, which is the default.

Acquiring the image in grayscale will not necessarily increase the speed of the program, but it should increase the speed of any processing you are doing. Since there is less information to process, it is faster. It really depends on what you are doing with the images after you acquire them.

As a general rule, there is no reason to acquire color images unless
you need the color information. A grayscale camera is cheaper and the image quality is usually better.

Bruce

[Sophomore LV programmer]

Dear Bruce,

I got the same problem as Irene. Your suggestion was very useful, but I saw only RGB and HSL color planes. Where can I set to Intensity plane or Value plane as in IMAQ Extract Single Color Plane.vi?

Thanks and regards

[Sophomore LV programmer]

Dear Bruce,

I got the same problem as Irene. Your suggestion was very useful, but I saw only RGB and HSL color planes. Where can I set to intensity plane?

Thanks and regards