Luminance-Based Multi-Scale Retinex

Abstract:

Multi-scale retinex (MSR) processsing has been shown to be an effective way to enhance image contrast, but it often has an undesirable desaturating effect on the image colours. A colour-restoration method [2,3] can help mitigate this effect, but our experience is that it simply leads to other problems. In this paper we modify MSR so that it preserves colour fidelity while still enhancing contrast. We then add neural-net based colour constancy processing [7] to this modified version of MSR. The result is a principled approach that provides the contrast-enhancement benefits of MSR and improved colour fidelity. 

Keywords: color, retinex, multi-scale retinex, MSR, contrast enhancement, color constancy, color fidelity 


copyright 1997 B.V. Funt, K. Barnard, M. Brockington, V. Cardei