Automatic White Balancing via Gray Surface Identification

The key to automatic white balancing of digital imagery is to estimate accurately the color of the overall scene illumination. Many methods for estimating the illumination’s color have been proposed [1-6]. Although not the most accurate, one of the simplest and quite widely used methods is the gray world algorithm [6]. Borrowing on some of the strengths and simplicity of the gray world algorithm, we introduce a modification of it that significantly improves on its performance while adding little to its complexity.