Automatic color retrieval using the Retinex and its Max White intrinsic property

A study for the impact of the Max White (MW) effect on the Retinex white-balancing algorithm is presented in this paper. The proposed approach fulfills the missing component for a complete set of the integrated color restoration algorithms, which combines the three traditional techniques: MW, Retinex, and Gray world. A quadratic mapping is used to adjust the faded color values, which the linear mapping of the original MW and Retinex fails to correct. The main focus of this research is on the changes that the MW introduces to the Retinex algorithm. A set of the old faded pictures are selected to test the performance of the proposed color restoration approach. Also, a numerical evaluation for the quality of the retrieved colors is calculated based on the cast comparison of each input and output image.