Fun with premultiplied alpha

  • Authors:
  • J. Blinn

  • Affiliations:
  • Microsoft Corp., Redmond, WA

  • Venue:
  • IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications
  • Year:
  • 1996

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Abstract

The computer graphics universe consists of pixels. Pixels, in turn, consist of components: red, green, blue, and the coverage or opacity value alpha. For various reasons it is convenient to store and process a given rgbα quadruple with the rgb values already multiplied by α. This was first pointed out in the original Porter-Duff compositing paper (1984) and I presented some further justifications in an earlier column (“Image Compositing-Theory”, ibid., p.83-7, Sept. 1994). This premultiplication has some other interesting implications, and that's what I discuss this time