Patent ID: 8094929

Claim:
A color identifying apparatus for identifying a color of a reaction surface which has caused a color reaction with a gas to be specified, comprising: a reference data storage that stores a plurality of associated sets of reference color information represented by a difference between one and the other remaining two of signal intensities of R, G, B signals of RGB bitmap images of a reaction surface which has caused a color reaction with a gas, and identifying information for identifying the reaction surface; an image capturing unit that captures an image of the reaction surface and generates RGB bitmap images of the reaction surface; an arithmetic unit that generates color information represented by the difference between one and the remaining other two signal intensities of R, G, B signals from the RGB bitmap images generated by said image capturing unit, checks the generated color information against the reference color information stored in said reference data storage, specifies the reference color information which corresponds to the generated color information, and specifies the identifying information which is related to the specified reference color information; and an output unit that outputs the identifying information specified by said arithmetic unit, and wherein said arithmetic unit calculates average values of the signal intensities of the respective R, G, B signals for all pixels from the RGB bitmap images generated by said image capturing unit, and generates color information represented by the differences between one and the remaining other two of the average values of the signal intensities of the respective R, G, B signals.