Image Contrast Optimization using Local Color Correction and Fuzzy Intensification

Global image enhancement techniques are used to enhance contrast in images but these techniques are found to be under-enhanced or over-enhanced in differently illuminated regions of the image. Local color correction methods work on local pixel regions to optimize the color contrast enhancement but they also have been found to show a lag while covering pixel regions which are overexposed, compared to those which are underexposed causing local artifacts. In this work, we overcome the shortcomings of both the local color correction and global color correction. This method uses local color correction in the Hue Saturation Luminance (HSL) domain, and fuzzy intensification operators are used to control the color fidelity of the local color corrected images. Thus, is able to sort out the problem of overexposed and underexposed regions and provide optimized contrast enhancement in colored images. Several experiments have been performed to analyze the performance of the proposed method and feasibility as compared to existing techniques. Performance parameters such as Mean Square Error (MSE), Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), Structural Similarity Index Measurement (SSIM) and Naturalness Image Quality Evaluator (NIQE) is evaluated and the comparison with some existing techniques of contrast enhancement of color images is performed. The obtained result have good contrast and approve the better performance of the proposed method in support of the quantitative measure of perceptual appearance of the processed images and low computational time.