Unsupervised digital movie restoration with spatial models of color

• Published in: Multimedia tools and applications Vol. 75; no. 7; pp. 3747 - 3765
• Main Authors: Rizzi, Alessandro, Berolo, Anna Jerry, Bonanomi, Cristian, Gadia, Davide
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.04.2016; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Algorithms; Analysis; Color; Computer Communication Networks; Computer Science; Cultural heritage; Data Structures and Information Theory; Digital; Digitization; Editorials; Eyes & eyesight; Film preservation; Human; Motion picture directors & producers; Motion picture production; Motion pictures; Multimedia; Multimedia computer applications; Multimedia Information Systems; Renovation & restoration; Restoration; Special Purpose and Application-Based Systems; Studies; Transformations; Vision systems; Unsupervised restoration; Color appearance; Restoration kickoff; Color restoration; Spatial color algorithms; Digital movie restoration
• ISSN: 1380-7501; 1573-7721
• DOI: 10.1007/s11042-014-2064-5

In this paper, we present an efficient approach to digital color restoration, based on the idea of recovering the appearance of color rather than the original color signal, since, in most of the cases, for old films the original reference is missing, and new films or digital coding can be subject to severe gamut transformations. This approach is based on the application of algorithms inspired by the capabilities of the Human Vision System of automatically adjust to the variation of color and lightness in the scene. The proposed method allows more unsupervised restoration. We present an overview of the approach, characteristics of this family of algorithms, and restoration examples.