Color recovery in outdoor environments: a novel integrated approach using retinex, gray world and stretching

There are several models for lightness computation, as many are the retinex based theories about color constancy. This paper provides a new hybrid technique for color recovery, which combines one of the most effective retinex algorithm (McCann99) and the gray world transformation applied at multiple resolutions.. A novel post processing step is also presented that improves the final color balance and range. The experimental tests on synthetic and real images, confirm the algorithm robustness and the improved color recovery capability with respect to other on the edge algorithms.