imshow(I) displays image I in a Handle Graphics® figure, where I is a grayscale, RGB (truecolor), or binary image. For binary images, imshow displays pixels with the value 0 (zero) as black and 1 as white. imshow optimizes figure, axes, and image object properties for image display.
imshow(I,[low high]) displays the grayscale image I, where [low high] is a two-element vector that specifies the display range for I. The value low (and any value less than low) displays as black and the value high (and any value greater than high) displays as white. imshow displays values in between as intermediate shades of gray.
imshow(I,[]) displays the grayscale image I, where [] is an empty matrix that specifies that you want imshow to scale the image based on the range of pixel values in I, using [min(I(:)) max(I(:))] as the display range.
example
imshow(X,map) displays the indexed image X with the colormap map. A colormap matrix can have any number of rows, but it must have exactly 3 columns. Each row is interpreted as a color, with the first element specifying the intensity of red light, the second green, and the third blue. Color intensity can be specified on the interval 0.0 to 1.0.
example
imshow(filename) displays the image stored in the graphics file specified by filename.
imshow(___,Name,Value) displays an image, using name-value pairs to control aspects of the operation.