Color space transformations for digital photography exploiting information about the illuminant estimation process

The color reproduction accuracy is a key factor to the overall perceived image quality in digital photography. In this framework, both the illuminant estimation process and the color correction matrix concur in the formation of the overall perceived image quality. To the best of our knowledge, the two processes have always been studied separately, thus ignoring the interactions between them. We investigate here these interactions, showing how the color correction transform amplifies the illuminant estimation errors. We demonstrate that incorporating knowledge about the illuminant estimation behavior in the optimization of the color correction matrix makes it possible to alleviate the error amplification. Different strategies to improve color accuracy under both perfect and imperfect white point estimations are investigated, and the experimental results obtained with a digital camera simulator are reported. © 2012 Optical Society of America.