The proposed method is a new tool to characterize colored textures and may be applied in various applications such as content image retrieval, characterization of rock samples, biometrics, classification of fabrics, and in non-destructive inspection in wood, steel, ceramic, fruit, and aircraft surfaces.

Many applications in image analysis require the accurate classification of complex patterns including both color and texture, e.g., in content image retrieval, biometrics, and the inspection of fabrics, wood, steel, ceramics, and fruits, among others. A new method for pattern classification using both color and texture information is proposed in this paper. The proposed method includes the following steps: division of each image into global and local samples, texture and color feature extraction from samples using a Haralick statistics and binary quaternion-moment-preserving method, a classification stage using support vector machine, and a final stage of post-processing employing a bagging ensemble. One of the main contributions of this method is the image partition, allowing image representation into global and local features. This partition captures most of the information present in the image for colored texture classification allowing improved results. The proposed method was tested on four databases extensively used in color–texture classification: the Brodatz, VisTex, Outex, and KTH-TIPS2b databases, yielding correct classification rates of 97.63%, 97.13%, 90.78%, and 92.90%, respectively. The use of the post-processing stage improved those results to 99.88%, 100%, 98.97%, and 95.75%, respectively. We compared our results to the best previously published results on the same databases finding significant improvements in all cases.