Object-to-object color transfer: Optimal flows and SMSP transformations

Given a source object and a target object, we consider the problem of transferring the “color scheme” of the source to the target, while at the same time maintaining the target´s original look and feel. This is a challenging problem due to the fact that the source and target may each consist of multiple colors, each of which comes in multiple shades. We propose a two stage solution to this problem. (1) A discrete color flow is computed from the target histogram to the source histogram; this flow is computed as the solution to a convex optimization problem, whose global optimum may be found. (2) The discrete flow is turned into a continuous color transformation, which can be written as a convex sum of Stretch-Minimizing Structure-Preserving (SMSP) transformations. These SMSP transformations, which are computed based on the color flow, are affine transformations with desirable theoretical properties. The effectiveness of this two stage algorithm is validated in a series of experiments.