Patent ID: 7706576

Claim:
A method for enhancing selected portions of an image, comprising: a processor obtaining an image, wherein said image includes at least one human face; the processor determining an area within said image corresponding to said at least one human face; and the processor optimizing said image in said area corresponding to said at least one human face to obtain an optimized image; wherein said optimizing said image in said area corresponding to said at least one human face includes: allocating a greater number of available colors to a range of colors within said area and a smaller number of available colors to said image outside of said area; allocating a greater number of available brightness levels to a brightness range within said area and a smaller number of available brightness levels to said image outside of said area; and allocating a greater range of contrast to said at least one area and a smaller range of contrast to said image outside of said area; wherein more than one color is included in said range of available colors allocated to portions of said image outside of said area corresponding to said human face, wherein a greater portion of an available range of parameter values related to at least one of an available range of colors, available brightness levels, or range of contrast are devoted to said area corresponding to said at least one human face than to other areas of said image, wherein a total amount of image information is constant across different frames of a sequence of images, and wherein areas of said sequence of images corresponding to said at least one human face change across said different frames of said sequence of images.