Automatic white balance with facial color features as reference color surfaces

摘要

An automatic white balance method and an electronic media device incorporating the method deploy characterized individual human facial color features set of a user or users of the device as reference color surfaces in automatic white balance illuminant estimation and color adjustments, which could improve illuminant estimation accuracy, provide flexible color adjustment options and render the image color to each user's own satisfaction taking into account user preferred rendition as target values through a human-machine interactive interface.

主权项

1. A method of automatic white balance of image and video media in an electronic media device, comprising:
acquiring one or a plurality of digital images of scenes including a face of a user or users of the device, including: capturing a digital image or images of a user or users using a lens and image sensor, receiving a digital image or images of a user or users after capturing using a lens and image sensor, or a combination of the capturing and receiving steps; acquiring a facial color features set of the user or users including intrinsic values and target values of the color profiles of a skin tone portion, eye ball white and teeth by a color profile extraction process; acquiring a digital image; conducting face detection, segmentation and recognition on the digital image, wherein if a recognized face is the face of a user matching a user entry in the facial color features set; conducting illuminant estimation based on segmented facial features and the acquired facial color features set resulting in C2, based on parts of the image other than the segmented facial parts features, resulting in C1, and determining a final estimation, C3, based on C1 and C2; and conducting automatic white balance gain adjustment and color enhancement based on C1, C2, C3, and the acquired facial color features set of the user or users.