Color image enhancement with high saturation using piecewise linear gamut mapping

Most of the color image enhancement algorithms are implemented in two stages: gray scale image enhancement, which finds the target intensity, and then gamut mapping of the original color coordinates to the target. Therefore, hue preserving gamut mapping is an essential and crucial step, which influences colorfulness. In conventional color mapping methods, color saturation is reduced after intensity modification, which deteriorates subjective image quality. In this paper, a new color enhancement algorithm resulting in high color saturation is proposed. The proposed method employs multiplicative and additive color mapping to improve color saturation without clipping of a color component for increased target intensity as well as decreased cases. This new scheme is fast and effective, therefore, it can be employed to real time applications such as video signal processing.