While implementing the image transforms that we discussed in the previous chapter, we adopted an approach that was based on the fundamentals and involved quite a bit of reinventing the wheel. We could afford to do that because the traversals that we performed over the data matrix in our implementations were conceptually pretty straightforward. However, we will no longer do that for a couple of reasons:
The kind of transformations that we are discussing at the moment (averaging using a filtering-based approach) no longer involves a simple pixel-by-pixel traversal of the data matrix. Rather, they involve a two-tiered approach where we have to traverse the neighborhood for each pixel that we encounter in our usual traversal of the data matrix. Implementing such a non-trivial traversal every single time can become time-consuming and error-prone.
As we progress through the book, we want you to rely more and more on the functions and APIs provided by the OpenCV developers...
