- Undocumented Matlab - https://undocumentedmatlab.com -

Image Easter egg

Posted By Yair Altman On In Low risk of breaking in future versions,Stock Matlab function,Undocumented feature | 2 Comments

Last year I presented the Matlab Spy Easter egg [1] for the 2009 Easter holiday. This year, slightly late, I present another Easter egg in the well-known image function: When we run image with no input arguments, we get a default image of an inverted boy:

image;

Default image
Default image

To see the image right-side up:

image;
colormap(gray(32));
axis ij image off

Corrected default image
Corrected default image

In fact, it turns out that there are quite a few hidden super-imposed images here, and that there is an interesting story behind them, which was explained by Steve Eddins in his Image Processing blog [2]. For those interested, the boy above is Steve’s eldest, but that’s only a small part of the story…
Happy Holiday!
Yair
p.s. – The default image has not changed in many years. I guess the boy should be in high school or college by now. Perhaps it’s time to post an updated picture in the R2010b release, Steve?

Related posts:

  1. Spy Easter egg [3] – The built-in Matlab function spy has an undocumented feature (Easter egg) when it is called with no input arguments....
  2. Spy Easter egg take 2 [4] – The default spy Easter-egg image in the spy function has recently changed. ...
  3. Auto-scale image colors [5] – Images can be automatically color-scaled for maximum resolution, using the undocumented MarkedClean event. ...
  4. Plot legend title [6] – Titles to plot legends are easy to achieve in HG1 (R2014a or earlier), but much more difficult in HG2 (R2014b or newer). ...
  5. Customizing axes part 2 [7] – Matlab HG2 axes can be customized in many different ways. This article explains some of the undocumented aspects. ...
  6. FIG files format [8] – FIG files are actually MAT files in disguise. This article explains how this can be useful in Matlab applications....
2 Comments (Open | Close)

2 Comments To "Image Easter egg"

#1 Comment By Steve Eddins On April 6, 2010 @ 11:30

Almost college.

Yes, it probably is time to change the image. But if it happens, I won’t be the one to do it this time. 🙂

#2 Comment By Rafael On April 6, 2010 @ 13:44

Funny thing… I was just reading this yesterday in his blog, and now you post it here!