Apple patent involves restoring color, enhancing electronic images
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
May 6, 2008 at 10:36am
An Apple patent (number 7369999) for methods and apparatuses for restoring color and enhancing electronic images has appeared at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. The invention relates to color correction, and more particular to color restoration and enhancement for electronic color images.
According to Apple, methods and apparatuses for color image restoration and enhancement are disclosed. In at least one embodiment, color signals for individual channels of an image (e.g., red, green, or blue) are adjusted based on a weighted set of averages (e.g., of the entire image, the center portion, the surrounding portion, or other portions). In one example, pixels with extreme values of color signals (e.g., pure black or white pixels) are ignored for the purposes of restoring color; and, the different averages are weighted according to the pixel location (e.g., the distance from the pixel to a center point). In one example, after color restoration for individual channels, the luminance of each pixel is adjusted back to their original levels; and the range of luminance of the image is further adjusted to provide improved brightness and contrast, where in determining the luminance the red, green and blue color channels are given an equal weight.
The inventor is Greg Christie.
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
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