Patent ID: 7272266

Claim:
A method of restoring color of an image, the method comprising: (a) reading an original image; (b) performing a white point balancing process on each color channel of the original image; (c) segmenting the white point balanced image into a plurality of sub-images; (d) sampling each sub-image to obtain color channel data for each sub-image; (e) selecting sub-images with a higher standard deviation of color channel data; (f) analyzing the selected sub-images to calculate a composite color channel mean for each color channel of the white point balanced image; (g) selecting a first color channel with a highest composite color channel mean, a second color channel with an intermediate composite color channel mean, and a third color channel with a lowest composite color channel mean; (h) applying a power function on the first and third color channels of all sub-images of the white point balanced image to approximately equalize the color channel means of the first, second, and third color channels; and (i) outputting a restored image.