Static Filtered Sky Color Constancy

Abstract

In Computer Vision, the sky color is used for lighting correction, image color enhancement, horizon alignment, image indexing, and outdoor image classification and in many other applications. In this article, for robust color based sky segmentation and detection, usage of lighting correction for sky color detection is investigated. As such, the impact of color constancy on sky color detection algorithms is evaluated and investigated. The color correction (constancy) algorithms used includes Gray-Edge (GE), Gray-World (GW), Max-RGB (MRGB) and Shades-of-Gray (SG). The algorithms GE, GW, MRGB, and SG, are tested on the static filtered sky modeling. The static filter is developed in the LAB color space. This evaluation and analysis is essential for detection scenarios, especially, color based object detection in outdoor scenes. From the results, it is concluded that the color constancy before sky color detection using LAB static filters has the potential of improving sky color detection performance. However, the application of the color constancy can impart adverse effects on the detection results. For images, the color constancy algorithms depict a compact and stable representative of the sky chroma loci, however, the sky color locus might have a shifting and deviation in a particular color representation. Since the sky static filters are using the static chromatic values, different results can be obtained by applying color constancy algorithms on various datasets.