Patent ID: 8717460

Claim:
A method for calibrating automatic white balance (AWB) in a digital system comprising a first imaging sensor, the method comprising: selecting an image as a scene prototype, wherein the selected image is representative of a class of images that resemble an image for which AWB failure was detected and wherein the selected image was captured by a second imaging sensor different from the first imaging sensor; transforming the selected scene prototype image into a scene prototype image for the first imaging sensor, wherein transforming the selected scene prototype reference comprises: computing second white balance gains R_gain, G_gain, B_gain based on a color temperature reference generated for the second imaging sensor that provides white balance correction for the selected scene prototype image converting the selected scene prototype image to a sensor independent scene prototype image by computing R, G, B values of pixels in the sensor independent scene prototype image based on R, G, B values of pixels in the selected scene prototype image and the second white balance gains R_gain, G_gain, B_gain; computing first white balance gains R_gain, G_gain, B_gain based on a color temperature reference in the color temperature references that provides white balance correction for the selected scene prototype image; and converting the sensor independent scene prototype image into the scene prototype image for the first imaging sensor by computing R, G, B values for pixels of the scene prototype image for the first imaging sensor using the first white balance gains and the R, G, B values of the pixels of the sensor independent scene prototype image; generating a scene prototype reference using the scene prototype image for the first imaging sensor; and adding the generated scene prototype reference to references for AWB, wherein the references comprise color temperature references.