A novel automatic white balance method for digital still cameras

Automatic white balance is an important function of digital still cameras. The goal of white balance is to adjust the image such that it looks as if it is taken under canonical light. We proposed a novel technique to detect reference white points in an image. Our algorithm uses dynamic threshold for white point detection and is more flexible than other existing ad hoc algorithms. We have tested the algorithm on 50 images taken under various light sources. The results show that the algorithm is superior or comparable to other methods in both objective and subjective evaluations. The complexity of the algorithm is quite low, which makes it attractive for real-world applications.