Colour-Science i2e ClearVision

 

Digital TV Image Enhancement System

 

Introduction

 

Automatic image enhancement, monitor calibration and color management are techniques used today in the latest digital high speed photo printers and minilabs. Using these techniques pictures from digital cameras can be printed in high quality.

Colour-Science AG has developed many specialized algorithms with the goal to display images in the best possible quality. Some techniques, like memory color enhancement even try to make the image look better then it was originally.

These techniques are coded in standard ANSI C software libraries and can be executed on multiple platforms including single chip digital image processors in consumer devices.

The ClearVision concept is the idea to use these highly developed techniques from photo printing to enhance the image of modern digital televisions (LCD, plasma or beamer).

Using mainly 3 techniques which we already use in different high speed photo printers it would be possible to reproduce TV images in excellent quality. ClearVision can so be seen as an ideal addition to today’s sound processing systems. The value could be even bigger for the manufacturers because in today’s media markets the buying decision for a TV is in most cases made comparing the image quality to other exposed TV’s.

 

See the difference of i2e ClearVision

 

Test it yourself by downloading the Image Editor Software.

Image Editor (Version 2.4) >>> 

 

 

The three techniques used for ClearVision are:

 

1)  i2e image enhancement

The Colour-Science i2e image enhancement software is used today in many photo-labs and printers for the fully automatic image enhancement or digital camera images. Using this technology, it would be possible to increase the image quality of TV’s much more than it is possible today with better hardware. The enhancement is fully automatic.

 

These are the following enhancement steps:

•           ABE    The Adaptive Brightness and Contrast Enhancement will stretch the histogram of the image and apply a gamma density correction.

•           ACE    The Adaptive Color Enhancement corrects even non linear color casts of the image.

•           SHE    The Shadow and Highlight Enhancement will show details in the shadows of dark or contrasted images. In the highlights it will accentuate details to prevent saturation.

•           MCE   Memory Color Enhancement will locally enhance important colors. Memory colors are for example skin tones, vegetation green and sky blue.

•           GSE    Global Sharpness Enhancement is an advanced unsharp masking which prevents edge overshooting.

•           LSE    Local Sharpness Enhancement will sharpen only parts of the image. For example vegetation is sharpened more then sky to prevent the apparition of pixel noise in the sky.

•           LNR    Local Noise Reduction will remove pixel noise from the image.

•           ICC    ICC profiling provides the tools to apply ICC profile conversions to the images.

 

A demo software can be downloaded from our website.

2)  Image flat fielding

This technique corrects the different luminance over the whole image (especially in the corners). It can also correct local color shifts. This technique may be especially helpful for video beamers which project not perpendicular to the screen.

3)  ICC profiling of the screen

Using this technique it is possible to assure that from monitor to monitor you get exactly the same greyscale and color reproduction.

 

Techniques 1 and 2 need a measurement device (colorimeter) to measure the RGB colors from the screen. Such a device could be integrated at low cost inside the TV remote control.

 

 

 

The ClearVision Digital TV Image Enhancement System

 

The following graph shows the different processing steps of the ClearVision Digital TV Image Enhancement System.

 

 

 

 

Possible versions of ClearVision

 

ClearVision

This is the standard version of ClearVision. The customer has no built in colorimeter to make his own calibration. The calibration is made once at the factory and stored as default calibration tables inside the TV. The i2e image enhancement is fully functional.

 

ClearVision PRO

Comes with a colorimeter built in the remote control. This allows the user to recalibrate the TV. This could be specially interesting for video beamers if the projection angle results in luminance  differences in the corners of the image.

 

 

Conclusion

 

If you have ever compared the different TV screens in airplanes or in shops then you will see how old fashioned and unsatisfactory today’s TV calibration and image enhancement is. The technology to do it better is available from modern photo printers. Thanks to today’s digital image processing in consumer TV’s this technology can now be implemented in any TV or video beamer.

 

 

Examples of i2e image enhancement

 

Example of Shadow Enhancement (SHE)

The details of the dark background of this flash exposure are brightened.

Example of Memory Color Enhancement (MCE)

The color of the vegetation is changed to a more pleasant green.

The skin color is made warmer and more naturally.

 

 

 

 

Example of Memory Color Enhancement (MCE)

The color of the vegetation is changed to a more saturated green.

The greyish sky is made more saturated. This is how people wish to see their holiday memories.

Example of Shadow Enhancement (SHE) combined with Memory Color Enhancement (MCE)

The dark trees are made brighter and the green is corrected to a more saturated and pleasant green.

Adaptive Brightness and Contrast Enhancement (ABE)

The greyish winter image is enhanced both in contrast and brightness.