Contrast enhancing colour to grey

Abstract

A spatial algorithm to convert colour images to greyscale is presented. The method is very fast and results in increased local and global contrast. At each image pixel, three weights are calculated. These are defined as the difference between the blurred luminance image and the colour channels: red, green and blue. The higher the difference the more weight is given to that channel in the conversion. The method is multi-resolution and allows the user to enhance contrast at different scales. Results based on three colour images show that the method results in higher contrast than luminance and two spatial methods: Socolinsky and Wolff [1,2] and Alsam and Drew [3]. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.