A practical approach to learning image processing concepts like histogram equalization, morphological opening and closing, and denoising.
The book provides a plethora of examples in both conceptual chapters as well as MATLAB scripts and routines, complete with code routines you can run as MATLAB scripts in your student version with the image processing toolbox. I still use many of those scripts -- augmented for specific use cases in radar imaging or object recognition -- today, so they stand the test of time.
The best part of having the MATLAB scripts is being able to test the concepts as soon as you learn them, in real time, on real images, reinforcing the concept in both your mind and advancing your project immediately. Nothing beats visual proof of how an algorithm works!
Though not every modern techniques receives coverage, the topics span enough to do graduate research in fields that involve image processing, especially RGB color image matrices, from image compression to computer vision. Highly recommend!