Gaining colour stability in live image capturing

Digital colour cameras are dramatically falling in price, making them affordable for ubiquitous appliances in many applications. An attempt to use colour information reveals a significant problem that usually escapes our awareness. Due to the adaptive nature of the human visual system in most cases we do not recognise most changes in illumination characteristics, a camera however will measure scenes under changing illumination differently. Attempts to deduce object colour from the images will need to cope with the influence of the illumination and the camera´s characteristics. Furthermore, a large variety of colour spaces are available to describe colour. Differences between them and their fitness to quantify colour are discussed. This paper tries to establish a basic understanding of the intricacies behind the processes involved in capturing images and recognising colour- from light as a stimulus to the sensed colour values in cameras. The goal is to outline a novel approach fusing common industrial best practices with dynamic adaptation capabilities needed for robustly measuring colour using cameras in real-time. First positive results towards improving colour based reasoning on adaptable colour spaces are stated as an outlook for further development directions.