Unsupported format or combination of formats when using cv::reduce method in OpenCV

Question

I am using OpenCV 2.4.2 and I am trying to take projections of two matrices (tmpl(32x44), subj(32x44)) along row and column. I have initialised a result matrix as rowProjectionSubj(subj.rows,1,CV_8UC1) Then I call cv::reduce(subj,rowProjectionSubj,1,CV_REDUCE_SUM,-1);

Why is this complaining about the type mismatch? I have kept the types same (by keeping dtype=-1 in cv::reduce. I get the tmpl and subj objects by doing cv::imread("image_path",0) i.e. scanning grayscale images in.

Answer 1

I might not be right, but after I saw this:

http://answers.opencv.org/question/3698/cvreduce-gives-unsupported-format-exception/?answer=3701#post-id-3701

and with a little experiment and using an old friend called "register math", I realised that when you add two 8-bit numbers, you need to consider a 8+1+1 bit register to store the sum because it potentially has carry output. so any result of reduce should have bigger space than the source i.e. if the source is 8-bit unsigned, it should be at least 16-bit unsigned or signed; might as well be 32-bit if it is going to be used for some product calculation and stuff...

NOTE: The destination type must be EXPLICITLY stated in the cv::reduce method. Please follow my openCV link for further information.