Color enhancement based on the anchoring theory

Providing consistent viewing experience across different reproduction conditions is an important issue for multimedia systems in the real world. In this paper, we propose a method to improve the perceptual quality of color reproduction for backlight-scaled images displayed on a liquid crystal display. Supported by the anchoring theory of lightness perception developed in psychology, this method is able to enhance the color appearance of images even when the backlight is only 5% of the original intensity. The goal is to make the appearance of the resulting images as close as possible to the original images illuminated with full backlight. The concept behind the proposed color enhancement method is general enough for many other applications. The effectiveness of the method is verified by subjective experiments.