colour composition

A remote-sensing term referring to the process of assigning different colours to different spectral bands. The colour picture formed by this process is called a "colour composite" (a colour image produced through optical combination of multiband images by projection through filters) and is produced by assigning a colour to an image of the Earth's surface recorded in a particular waveband. For a Landsat colour composite, the green waveband is coloured blue, the red waveband is coloured green and the infrared waveband is coloured red. This produces an image closely approximating a false colour photograph. Colour composite images are easier to interpret than separate images recording different wavebands. US national experimental crop inventories are based upon visual interpretation of Landsat colour composites. (Source: RRDA / WHIT)