False Color Composite (FCC)
A false color satellite image is one in which the Red(R), Green(G), and Blue(B) values do not correspond to the true colors of red, green and blue. A standard False Colour Composite (FCC) blue is assigned to green radiatons (0.5 to 0.6 μm), green is assigned to red radiatons (0.6 to 0.7 μm and red is assigned to Near Infrared radiaton (0.7 to 0.8 μm).
In other words, a false color composite is a multispectral image interpretation using the standard visual RGB band range. FCC imagery can be produced using different color combinations. The choice of a color scheme depends on the type of objects that need to be emphasized in the image.
Table of Contents
False Color Composite Vegetation
This false colour composite scheme allows vegetaton to be detected readily in the image. vegetaton appears in diferent shades of red depending on the types and conditons of the vegetaton, since it has a high refectance in the NIR band
False Color Composite Band Combination
FCC Band Combination (RGB) | Description |
---|---|
4,3,2 | Standard “false-colour” combinaton. Vegetaton shows in red. |
3,2,1 | The “nature colour” combinaton. It provides the most water penetraton. |

Four most common false-color band combinatons are:
- Near infrared (red), green (blue), red (green). This is a traditonal and polular band combinaton useful in seeing changes in plant health.
- Shortwave infrared (red), near infrared (green), and green (blue), often used to show foods or newly burned land.
- Blue (red), two diferent shortwave infrared bands (green and blue). We use this to diferentate between snow, ice, and clouds.
- Thermal infrared, usually shown in tones of gray to illustrate temperature.
Colour Signatures on Standard False Colour Composite of Surface Features
1. Healthy Vegetaton and Cultiated Areas:
Features | Colour In Standard FCC |
---|---|
Evergreen | Red to magenta |
Deciduous | Brown to red |
Scrubs | Light brown with red patches |
Cropped land | Pink to Bright red |
Fallow land | Light blue to white |
Wetland vegetaton | Blue to grey |
2. Waterbody:
Features | Colour In Standard FCC |
---|---|
Clear water | Dark blue to black |
Turbidity waterbody | Light blue |
3. Built up Area:
Features | Colour In Standard FCC |
---|---|
High density | Dark blue to bluish green |
Low density | Light blue |
4. Waste lands/Rock outcrops:
Features | Colour In Standard FCC |
---|---|
Rock outcrops | Light brown |
Sandy deserts/River sand/ | Light blue to white |
Salt afected Deep ravines | Dark green |
Shallow ravines | Light green |
Water logged/Wet lands | Motelled black |
False Natural Color Composite
Some of the Sensors (SPOT, LISS-III, LISS-IV) do not capture blue band, because of higher scattering problem. That means it’s not possible to generate true color composites.
Perform FNCC
- Select Raster tab Resolution group choose Spectral click Natural Color.
- The Natural Color dialog opens, select your Indut data file (e.g- kolkata_2010_liss3).
- Choose your Output destination, and enter file name.
- Define the band spectral range, Near infrared-3, Red-2, Green-1.
- Check on the Ignore Zero in Stats chackbox.
- Finally click OK button to start this process.

