A Method for Transferring Color to Grayscale Images

Abstract

Adding color to a grayscale image is important in various fields. However, much trial and error is needed to obtain the appropriate colorized result since no standard method exists for this procedure. We propose a method to colorize grayscale images using a neural network. The relation between brightness and color in a reference color image was studied using the neural network. The grayscale image was then colorized through the network. For images consisting complicated scene components, multiple neural networks among the swatches proposed by Reinhard et al. were utilized. We show the superiority of our approach over the conventional methods by demonstrating several examples.