Automatic color correction: region-based approach and performance evaluation using full reference metrics

This article proposes a solution to automatic color correction between two images/videos based on region correspondences. It starts with image segmentation by marker-controlled watershed transformation, which is faster and produces more uniform regions with better adherence to object boundaries than the segmentation in previous color correction approaches. Then, regions between two images are matched using point feature correspondences which are invariant to geometric transformation and illumination change. Finally, the color distorted image is corrected using the color statistics of corresponding regions and the color transfer functions weighted by influence masks. We demonstrate the experimental results using several data sets and evaluate the color correction by different measures of image similarity.