Accelerating color space transformations using numerical approximations

Color space transformations are frequently used in image processing, graphics, and visualization applications. In many cases, these transformations are complex nonlinear functions, which prohibits their use in time-critical applications. In this paper, we present a new approach called Minimax Approximations for Color-space Transformations (MACT). We demonstrate MACT on two commonly used color space transformations. Extensive experiments on a large and diverse image set and comparisons with well-known multidimensional lookup table interpolation methods show that MACT achieves an excellent balance among four criteria: ease of implementation, memory usage, accuracy, and computational speed.