Feature

Dilate Outline

✨ A Complete Guide to the Dilate Outline Tool

PhenoCapture AI’s Dilate Outline tool is a specialized morphological feature designed to expand and thicken object boundaries. Acting as the exact opposite of the Erode Outline tool, this function meticulously scans your objects and adds exactly one pixel of thickness to the outer boundaries. It is the perfect tool for precise, single-pixel expansion and thickening of object perimeters without distorting the overall shape.

💡 Key Features

  • Precise 1-Pixel Boundary Expansion: The algorithm scans the background area immediately surrounding your objects. If a background pixel (Black) touches an object pixel (White) on its top, bottom, left, or right side, it is instantly recognized as an adjacent outline and converted to the object’s color, thickening the shape by exactly one pixel.
  • Automatic Binarization & Binary Support: While built specifically for analyzing binary (black-and-white) shapes, the tool features a high-speed internal auto-binarization engine. This means you can apply it directly to color images as well, ensuring that the structural integrity of your shapes is maintained while cleanly building upon the outermost layer.
  • Smart Regional Masking: Need to expand just one specific object? Draw a selection boundary! The tool will safely restrict its boundary-checking logic to the inside of your mask, ensuring no accidental dilation happens outside your selected area.
  • High-Speed Memory Optimization: Operating via direct memory access, the tool bypasses standard UI bottlenecks to sequentially process the pixel array (_SrcPixels). This guarantees rapid execution even on incredibly high-resolution binary maps.
  • Seamless Undo Integration: Connected directly to PhenoCapture AI’s built-in undo engine, allowing you to instantly revert the 1-pixel outline expansion if the result is too thick.

🛠️ How to Use the Dilate Outline Tool

Step 1: Prepare Your Image and Mask (Optional)

Ensure your image is loaded into the main workspace. Because the tool automatically runs an internal binarization algorithm, you can use either a color image or a pre-processed binary image. However, for strictly precise morphological analysis, we highly recommend perfectly isolating your objects beforehand using our dedicated high-performance binarization tools: Manual Binarization, Adaptive Binarization, Binarization and Segmentation, or Custom Binarization.

If you only want to dilate a specific object or region, use the advanced selection tools to draw your mask boundary. If no mask is active, the tool will process the entire image.

Step 2: Apply the Tool

Navigate to the menu and click on Dilate Outline.

Step 3: View the Result

The software will instantly scan the image, locate the exact background pixels touching your bright objects, and change them to the object color. Your objects will immediately appear exactly 1 pixel thicker. Use the Undo shortcut to easily compare the “before and after” shapes!