As mentioned in class, images sometimes have four channels! The fourth channel is known as an alpha channel, and us useful when creating composite images (the process of combining one image with a background). For example, Zoom has the feature of replacing our background with an image of our choice, by identifying "foreground" and "background" pixels in an image. This can be done with an alpha channel.
Note though that the alpha channel cannot be captured directly with a camera! You need sophisticated computer vision algorithms to generate an alpha channel from the camera image.
As mentioned in class, images sometimes have four channels! The fourth channel is known as an alpha channel, and us useful when creating composite images (the process of combining one image with a background). For example, Zoom has the feature of replacing our background with an image of our choice, by identifying "foreground" and "background" pixels in an image. This can be done with an alpha channel.
Note though that the alpha channel cannot be captured directly with a camera! You need sophisticated computer vision algorithms to generate an alpha channel from the camera image.