A12 - Color Camera Processing

White balancing ensures that the colors in a digital image are properly rendered. The following images depict the same scene imaged using different white balancing conditions. The worst rendering is that which assumes a Tungsten light source.




In this activity, two methods for white balancing the image with the Tungsten setting are tested, the first is the White Patch Algorithm where the R, G, and B values of a white patch in this image is used as a factor to divide the respective channels. the result is shown below in the left. We observe that the colors are now correctly rendered. The image on the right on the other hand is white balanced using the Gray World Algorithm that doe not need a white patch in the image because the factor used to divide is instead the average value of in the three channels. We see that the image has colors that are saturated and the image is too bright.



We now compare the methods with an image of different red objects.



We see that the white patch algorithm (left) renders the colors correctly whereas the gray world algorithm results to an image which is too bright. (right)



I think that the better method to use is the white patch algorithm because it renders the colors correctly and without saturation.

For this activity, I give myself a grade of 10 for being able to implement the activity correctly. I would also like to acknowledge BA Racoma for letting me borrow his pictures since my camera has no white balance settings.