[Numpy-discussion] Sobel question

[Peter Verveer]

> I recently started playing with numarray and especially nd_image for 
> processing grayscale and RGB images. nd_image looks very interesting 
> and I'm looking forward to checking.

Thanks for your interest! I hope it is useful for you...

> My question deals with the axis parameter of the Sobel filter. What 
> does the function return when axis=-1?
>
> I figured out that when axis=0, the function returns the vertical 
> gradient component and when axis=1 the horizontal gradient component. 
> Since -1 is the default I expected that it would return the gradient 
> magnitude (sqrt(x*x + y*y)) but that's not the case.

The Sobel filter is always a derivative along  a single direction. A 
negative value is used to specifiy an axis relative to the rank of the 
array, so for a 2D array, axis=-1 is equivalent to axis=1, and axis=-2 
is equivalent to axis=0. For a 3D array, axis=-1 is equivalent to 
axis=2. This convention is (or should be) followed by all numarray 
functions that specify an axis.

If you want a gradient magnitude using Sobel derivatives, you can use 
the generic_gradient_magnitude() function.

Cheers, Peter