<title>Recent progress in automatic digital restoration of color motion pictures</title>

Abstract

The motion pictures represent a precious cultural heritage, however the chemical support on which they are recorded becomes unstable with time, unless they are stored at low temperatures. Some defects affecting color movies, such as bleaching, are out of reach of photochemical restoration means, digital restoration is hence unquestionable. We propose an original automatic technique for faded image correction. Bleaching results in damage to one or two chromatic layers, giving a drab image with poor saturation and an overall color cast. Our automatic fading correction technique consists in reviving the colors of the image (color enhancement), then in balancing the colors of the image.