Two-staged image colorization based on salient contours

In this paper we present a novel colorization technique that manages to significantly reduce color bleeding artifacts caused by weak object boundaries and also requires only abstract color indications and placement from the user. It is essentially a two-staged color propagation algorithm. Guided by the extracted salient contours of the image, we roughly mark and divide the image in two differently treated image area categories: Homogeneous color areas of high confidence and critical attention-needing areas of edges and region boundaries. The method was tested with user drawn scribble images, but can be easily adopted by image exemplars employing techniques, as well.