The potential importance of color in surveillance applications can be illustrated very clearly : turn off the color on a television monitor to make it a monochrome scene. It is obvious how much in formation is lost when the colors in the scene change to shades of gray. Objects that were easily identified in the color scene be come difficult to identify in the monochrome scene. It is much easier to pick out a person with a red shirt in the color image than in a monochrome image.