Color restoration in old photographs using dark channel processing

Kuruoglu E. E.

Color restoration  Dark channel processing  old image restoration 

We propose a direct and effective method for color restoration and contrast enhancement in old images. The main idea is based on the dark channel assumption. Using this assumption with the faded old image model, we can directly estimate the degraded transmission coefficient of an old image and directly recover it to a high quality degradation-free image. Moreover, a novel average processing and dark channel processing chain method (A-D chain method) is proposed to partly avoid the side effects introduced by dark channel processing.

Source: ISTI Technical reports, pp.1–13, 2012