Preferred skin color enhancement for photographic color reproduction

Abstract

Skin tones are the most important colors among the memory color category. Reproducing skin colors pleasingly is an important factor in photographic color reproduction. Moving skin colors toward their preferred skin color center improves the color preference of skin color reproduction. Several methods to morph skin colors to a smaller preferred skin color region has been reported in the past. In this paper, a new approach is proposed to further improve the result of skin color enhancement. An ellipsoid skin color model is applied to compute skin color probabilities for skin color detection and to determine a weight for skin color adjustment. Preferred skin color centers determined through psychophysical experiments were applied for color adjustment. Preferred skin color centers for dark, medium, and light skin colors are applied to adjust skin colors differently. Skin colors are morphed toward their preferred color centers. A special processing is applied to avoid contrast loss in highlight. A 3-D interpolation method is applied to fix a potential contouring problem and to improve color processing efficiency. An psychophysical experiment validates that the method of preferred skin color enhancement effectively identifies skin colors, improves the skin color preference, and does not objectionably affect preferred skin colors in original images.