Underwater Image Enhancement Based on Color Compensation and White Balance

Ensuring color accuracy is essential when processing underwater images of coral reefs. These images often suffer from color distortion and blurring due to absorption and scattering. Current trends in underwater color correction focus on mitigating these distortions, as well as addressing non-uniform illumination that leads to artifacts and reduced visibility and contrast. Effective techniques include color compensation for the red channel alone or both the red and blue channels simultaneously. On the color compensated image, the Grayworld and CLAHE methods were applied to compare the results. Evaluations using PSNR, UCIQE, and UIQM metrics confirm that such color compensation techniques significantly enhance the quality of underwater images. It was found that grayworld is able to restore the original color for greenish and yellowish images, while CLAHE can improve dull images.