Research project

Illuminant Color Estimation

The interpretation of a scene is significantly influenced by the illumination color. Depending on the scene illumination, the appearance of objects can significantly vary under different illuminants. This gives rise to two research directions. First, it is possible to extract semantic information about the scene. Second, it is possible to use the estimated illuminant color for scene normalisation, also known as color constancy. This supports all higher-level computer vision tasks that use color information either directly or indirectly.

In this project, different illumination effects like specular highlights and shadows are examined. The focus of this project is on the physics-based estimation of the illuminant color on real images. The methods that exist so far either work on laboratory data, or require a large amount of training data. In this project, the approach is to make physics-based methods without (or with minimal) machine learning sufficiently robust for the application on real-world images.

Project manager:
Elli Angelopoulou, Ph.D., Akad. Rat

Project participants:
Dr.-Ing. Christian Riess, Dipl.-Inf. Eva Eibenberger

Keywords:
Illuminant Color; Color Constancy; Physics-based Vision; Light; Illumination Correction

Duration: 1.11.2008 - 31.12.2014

Contact:
Riess, Christian
Phone +49 9131 85 27774, Fax +49 9131 85 27270, E-Mail: christian.riess@fau.de

Publications

Riess, Christian ; Jordan, Johannes ; Angelopoulou, Elli: A Common Framework for Ambient Illumination in the Dichromatic Reflectance Model. In: Gevers, Theo ; Rother, Carsten ; Tominaga, Shoji ; van de Weijer, Joost ; Zickler, Todd (Ed.) : 2009 IEEE 12th International Conference on Computer Vision Workshops (IEEE Color and Reflectance in Imaging and Computer Vision Workshop 2009 Kyoto, Japan 04.10.2009). 2009, pp 1939-1946. - ISBN 978-1-4244-4441-0

Riess, Christian ; Eibenberger, Eva ; Angelopoulou, Elli: Illuminant Estimation by Voting. Erlangen : Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. 2009 (2009/1391). - Research report. 11 pages

Riess, Christian ; Angelopoulou, Elli: Physics-Based Illuminant Color Estimation as an Image Semantics Clue. In: International Conference on Image Processing (Org.) : Proceedings on the International Conference on Image Processing (International Conference on Image Processing Cairo, Egypt 7.11.-10.11.2009). 2009, pp 689-692.

Bleier, Michael ; Riess, Christian ; Beigpour, Shida ; Eibenberger, Eva ; Angelopoulou, Elli ; Tröger, Tobias ; Kaup, André: Color Constancy and Non-Uniform Illumination: Can Existing Algorithms Work? In: Theo Gevers ; Kyros Kutulakos ; Joost van de Weijer ; Todd Zickler (Ed.) : IEEE Color and Photometry in Computer Vision Workshop (IEEE Color and Photometry in Computer Vision Workshop Barcelona 12.11.2011). 2011, pp 1-8.

Riess, Christian ; Eibenberger, Eva ; Angelopoulou, Elli: Illuminant Color Estimation for Real-World Mixed-Illuminant Scenes. In: Theo Gevers ; Kyros Kutulakos ; Joost van de Weijer ; Todd Zickler (Ed.) : IEEE Color and Photometry in Computer Vision Workshop (IEEE Color and Photometry in Computer Vision Workshop Barcelona 12.11.2011). 2011, pp 1-8.

Beigpour, Shida ; Riess, Christian ; van de Weijer, Joost ; Angelopoulou, Elli: Multi-Illuminant Estimation with Conditional Random Fields. In: IEEE Transactions on Image Processing 23 (2014), No. 1, pp 83-95

Meyer, Manuel ; Riess, Christian ; Angelopoulou, Elli ; Evangelopoulos, Georgios ; Kakadiaris, Ioannis: Color Constancy in 3D-2D Face Recognition. In: SPIE (Ed.) : Defense, Security + Sensing (Biometric and Surveillance Technology for Human and Activity Recognition Baltimore, MD, USA 02.05). Vol. 8712. 2013, pp 8712-17.

Christlein, Vincent ; Riess, Christian ; Angelopoulou, Elli ; Evangelopoulos, Georgios ; Kakadiaris, Ioannis: The Impact of Specular Highlights on 3D-2D Face Recognition. In: SPIE (Ed.) : Defense, Security + Sensing (Biometric and Surveillance Technology for Human and Activity Identification Baltimore, MD, USA 03.05.2013). Vol. 8712. 2013, pp 8712-19.

Riess, Christian ; Pfaller, Sven ; Bernecker, David ; Angelopoulou, Elli: Towards the Estimation of Non-Uniform Illumination in Real-World Scenes. In: Gesellschaft zur Förderung angewandter Informatik e.V. (Ed.) : 19. Workshop Farbbildverarbeitung (19. Workshop Farbbildverarbeitung Berlin 26.09.2013). 2013, pp 1-8.