RGBEXCEL : An RGB Image Data Extractor and Exporter for Excel Processing

The objective of this paper was to develop a means of rapidly obtaining RGB image data, as part of an effort to develop a low-cost method of image processing and analysis based on Microsoft Excel. A simple standalone GUI (graphical user interface) software application called RGBExcel was developed to extract RGB image data from any colour image files of any format. For a given image file, the output from the software is an Excel file with the data from the R (red), G (green), and B (blue) bands of the image contained in different sheets. The raw data and any enhancements can be visualized by using the surface chart type in combination with other features. Since Excel can plot a maximum dimension of 255 by 255 pixels, larger images are downscaled to have a maximum dimension of 255 pixels. Results from testing the application are discussed in the paper.