Integrated multi-scale retinex using fuzzy connectivity based on CIELAB color space for preserving color

Abstract

In this paper, a tone reproduction method that preserves color in area containing unevenly distributed intensity is proposed. Although Retinex algorithm is one of the most popular tone reproduction algorithms, it still has several problems caused by using only the Gaussian kernel which is insufficient to consider local condition such as steep variation of illumination or sudden change of color. To overcome this problem, we proposed a pixel-wise adaptive fuzzy kernel which is capable for changing its weight to preserve the local condition in an image, instead of the Gaussian kernel. Moreover, the proposed kernel also considered color consistency as human visual system by eliminating illumination components in an observed image. Experiment results on some images with different local conditions showed that the proposed method effectively reduces the problems. © Springer-Verlag 2013.