Add watershed clustering: hierarchical watershed frontend

An alternative region-forming frontend selected by --clustering watershed
(the color_mode field is replaced by clustering: color-cluster | bw |
watershed across CLI, Rust, Python, and Node — it selects the algorithm,
not a color space).

The algorithm is the watershed hierarchy by volume on the 4-adjacency
pixel graph, implemented from the papers:

  Cousty, Bertrand, Najman, Couprie, "Watershed Cuts: Minimum Spanning
  Forests and the Drop of Water Principle", IEEE TPAMI 31(8), 2009.
  Najman, Cousty, Perret, "Playing with Kruskal", ISMM 2013.

Edge weights are the max per-channel color difference between adjacent
pixels (no gradient image); a counting-sorted Kruskal pass builds the
binary partition tree as a flat parents array; a leaves-to-root pass
computes subtree area and volume; each merge's persistence (the volume of
the smaller side, plateau-corrected) becomes its MST edge's saliency; and
cutting the hierarchy is single-linkage over MST edges below the cut
level. Watershed cuts label every pixel — no watershed-line pixel class —
so the output is a strict, gapless partition that drops straight into
both stacked and cutout modes. Integer arithmetic and flat u32 arrays
throughout; deterministic across platforms; ~66 ms on a 1400x775 photo.

The one dial, --watershed-detail (0..=255), maps exponentially to a
target region count (each +25.5 doubles it) since the persistence
distribution is far too skewed for a linear threshold. filter_speckle
absorbs undersized basins into their most color-similar neighbour rather
than dropping them, preserving the partition. The largest region is
emitted first as a solid full-canvas background layer so stacked mode
keeps its seam-free overdraw; the mosaic flatten is unaffected.

Tests: partition invariant (disjoint masks tiling the canvas), detail
monotonicity, min-area absorption, determinism, watershed cases in the
pipeline/golden suites, stacked-vs-cutout interior equivalence, a
watershed seam test, and SegmentKey coverage for the new params.
This commit is contained in:
Chris Tsang
2026-07-27 14:45:25 +01:00
parent f4872fcfe3
commit 46a1b90ccd
21 changed files with 854 additions and 67 deletions
+5
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@@ -11,6 +11,11 @@ and this project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](http://semver.org/).
* Binary thresholding: a tunable fixed threshold and Bradley–Roth adaptive thresholding for uneven lighting — CLI `--threshold` / `--adaptive` (`--adaptive-window`, `--adaptive-t`), also on `Config`, Python, and Node.
* Cutout mode merges neighbouring mosaic regions whose colors are within one gradient step — the flattened tessellation no longer keeps the near-identical faces that stacked gradient layering splits a smooth area into.
* Watershed clustering (`--clustering watershed`): an alternative region-forming frontend — a hierarchical watershed by volume on the pixel graph (Cousty et al., TPAMI 2009; Najman, Cousty & Perret, ISMM 2013), cut at a single `--watershed-detail` dial (0..=255, each +25.5 roughly doubles the region count). Content-adaptive regions with no watershed-line pixels; the partition drops straight into both stacked and cutout modes.
### Changed
* `color_mode` is replaced by `clustering` (`color-cluster` | `bw` | `watershed`) across the CLI (`--clustering`), Rust (`Config::clustering`, enum `Clustering`), Python, and Node — the field selects the region-forming algorithm, not a color space.
## 1.0.0-alpha.1 - 2026-07-24