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A contrast maximization method for color-to-grayscale conversion

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Abstract

In this paper, we study how to convert a color image to a grayscale image, and consider an effective contrast maximization method for color-to-grayscale conversion. Our method is based on the combination of red, green and blue channels pixel values. The optimization problem involves the maximization of the variance of the output grayscale image, the data-fitting term between the brightness of the input and output images. A regularization term is also added to make the resulting objective function to be convex and obtain a stable combination of red, green and blue pixel values. Experimental results on a set of benchmark color images are reported to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, and that its performance is better than those obtained by the other testing methods.

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Notes

  1. http://www.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/leojia/projects/color2gray/index.html.

  2. http://cadik.posvete.cz/color_to_gray_evaluation/.

  3. To obtain the optimal parameters, we can try different values of \(\tau \) and \(\mu \) to maximize the color contrast preserving ratio.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Science, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing, China

    Zhengmeng Jin

  2. Department of Mathematics, Center for Mathematical Imaging and Vision, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong

    Michael K. Ng

Authors
  1. Zhengmeng Jin
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  2. Michael K. Ng
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael K. Ng.

Additional information

The research is supported in part by the NSFC Grant 11101218 and the Natural Science Foundation for Colleges and Universities in Jiangsu Province (No. 11KJB110009). The research is supported in part by HKRGC Grant Number 202013 and HKBU FRGs.

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Jin, Z., Ng, M.K. A contrast maximization method for color-to-grayscale conversion. Multidim Syst Sign Process 26, 869–877 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11045-014-0295-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11045-014-0295-2

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