Method for determining color of illuminant and apparatus therefor

Abstract

A method for determining the color of an illuminant and an apparatus therefor are provided. The method for determining the color of the illuminant according to the present invention includes the steps of obtaining an RGB mean vector value by selecting an arbitrary image and calculating a mean value in each RGB channel with respect to the image, defining a predetermined coefficient f which is a positive integer larger than 1 and estimating a value obtained by multiplying f by the RGB mean vector value as temporary color of the illuminant with respect to the selected image, estimating the illuminant color closest to the temporarily estimated illuminant color temperature on the day light locus as an illuminant color temperature, setting a value obtained by multiplying k by the estimated color of the illuminant as a self luminous threshold value in order to establish a self luminous area using a human visual characteristic wherein k is a predetermined coefficient which is a positive integer larger than 1, generating an image from which the self luminous threshold value is removed by removing the self luminous area having the RGB value exceeding the self luminous threshold value, and calculating the color of an illuminant from the uv chrominance value of the image from which the self luminous area is removed and outputting the illuminant color. It is possible to stably and effectively extract information of an illuminant by selectively excluding a self luminous area from a visually sensed image in the method for detecting the illuminant color according to the present invention.