Abstract

The colors a camera sees depends on the color of the viewing illuminant and, unless corrected, this leads to poor color reproduction. There are two strategies to color correction: constrained and unconstrained. The constrained methods rely on simplifying assumptions about the world (e.g. there is a white reflectance is in every scene). If the assumptions hold then good correction is possible but if they do not hold, which is often the case, then poor correction results. In contrast, the unconstrained approach attempts to correct colors without making any world assumptions whatsoever. Rather, correction proceeds by exploiting only the information inherent in the physics of color image formation. Recent work by Finlayson has demonstrated that the unconstrained approach can deliver good color correction. Indeed excellent color correction has been demonstrated for images of everyday scenes. However, Finlayson's algorithm is relatively complex (high computational complexity) and it is also...

Citations